Since I seem to be on a roll the last few days discussing cancer quackery, I thought I’d just go with it at least one more day. Frequently, when I get on these rolls laying down the Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, over antivaccine quackery I start whining about how I need to change topics, but not this time around, not this topic. It takes a lot more than what I’ve posted lately to make me feel as though I need a change of pace. Besides, for whatever reason, the blog fodder is flying at me fast and furious, whether it be the dubious testimonial I discussed yesterday, yet another deconstruction of the moral bankruptcy that is Stanislaw Burzynski, or my take on the sheer quackery that is “naturopathic oncology.” The first rule of blogging is that you don’t talk about blogging. Oh, wait. That’s not it. I talk about blogging all the time. The first rule of blogging is: When the world is throwing easy blogging material at you, for cryin’ out loud, go for it. Yeah, that’s it.

So I’m going for it.
The blog fodder this time around comes in the form of three articles that appeared in ONCOLOGY: Perspectives on Best Practices, an open-access journal about…well, oncology. All three of them are about cancer quackery. Shockingly, in the first article, by Barrie Cassileth, director of all woo integrative oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and IIan R. Yarett, actually uses the word “quackery” in its title: Cancer Quackery: The Persistent Popularity of Useless, Irrational ‘Alternative’ Treatments. In it, Cassileth provides a rather standard discussion of bogus cancer treatments that almost could have been written by Orac, were it not for the complete and utter lack of snark, even the subtle snark that academics sneak into papers. She does, however, complain that quacks have appropriated the term “complementary” in order to “use it incorrectly.” This complaint derives from how many of these cancer quacks don’t actually advocate using their nostrums in addition to conventional therapy but rather in lieu of science-based medicine. Personally, I find this amusing, given that quackademics have no one to blame but themselves for this, given the specific modalities they have tried to “integrate” with science-based medicine. It rather reminds me of the “intelligent design” creationists, craving respectability and crowing to high heaven that they aren’t pseudoscientists but real “scientists,” taking umbrage at being lumped together with fundamentalist creationists who believe that the earth was created 6,000 years ago with all animals in their current forms. No, Cassileth seems to be saying, we don’t associate with that riff-raff. They’re fundamentalist loons. We’re scientists!

I’ll give her some credit for this article, though, and why not? Cassileth lists a fairly standard bunch of quack treatments, the majority of which have been covered on this blog at one time or another, and rips into them. The litany should be familiar: laetrile, shark cartilage, Entelev/Cantron (which I recently discussed, with the comment thread afterward having swollen as of this writing to nearly 1,100 entries), various oxygen therapies (such as hyperbaric oxygen or various means of administering hydrogen peroxide, “energy therapies,” which Cassileth admits have no evidence to support them. Given that admission, one wonders why reiki, which is a form of “energy therapy,” is offered at MSKCC. Come to think of it, acupuncture is also a form of “energy healing” as well, given its claim to be able to manipulate the flow of qi through the body to healing intent, and MSKCC offers acupuncture as well. That doesn’t stop Cassileth from making the dubious claim that acupuncture and other woo have “been shown to be safe and effective as adjunctive treatments for managing pain, nausea, stress, and many other symptoms, and for supporting patient well-being in general,” whatever “supporting patient well-being in general” means.

There are other weaknesses. For instance, no mention is made of Gerson therapy, and it is that particular form of quackery, as well as its many variants (such as the Gonzalez protocol and other treatments that loosely fall under the rubric of “metabolic therapies” and often include such lovely interventions as coffee enemas), that is arguably the cancer quackery most heavily promoted right now; that is, unless high dose vitamin C, which never seems to stay dead no matter how many scientific stakes are driven into its heart, isn’t the most common quackery. One could only wish that, like the vampires on True Blood, such quackeries would explode into a disgusting blob of blood and tissue when the stake of science is driven through their hearts, but sadly this never seems to happen. Her omissions aside, I can’t be too hard on Cassileth. Her article is actually pretty good, by and large, if you can ignore that she is in charge of bringing quackademic medicine into one of the greatest cancer centers in the world. She also makes this statement:

Many alternative approaches to healing are premised on the concept of the mind/body connection, and specifically on the theory that patients can harness the power of their mind to heal their physical ills.[4] Many mind/body techniques, such as meditation and biofeedback, have been shown to reduce stress and promote relaxation, and are effectively and appropriately used as complementary therapies today. However, some proponents of these techniques overpromise, suggesting that emotional stress or other emotional issues can cause diseases like cancer and that correction of these deficiencies through mind-body therapies can effectively treat major illnesses. Such claims are unsupported.

Many of these ideas were promoted by a former Yale surgeon, a popular author who advocated special cancer patient support groups in his books. The importance of a positive attitude was stressed, as was the idea that disease could spring from unmet emotional needs. This belief anguished many cancer patients, who assumed responsibility for getting cancer because of an imperfect emotional status. Among alternative modalities, the mind/body approach has been especially persistent over time, possibly in part because it resonates with the American notion of rugged individualism.[4]

Of course, none of this stops MSKCC from offering “mind-body” services. I guess it’s OK to Cassileth because she doesn’t promise that such woo will cure the cancer. OK, I’ll stop with the snark (at least the snark directed at Cassileth). She’s basically correct that there is no evidence that these therapies can impact the natural history of cancer and produce a survival benefit, and I give her props for carpet-bombing the quackery that is the German New Medicine.

Cassileth’s article was accompanied by not one, but two, additional commentaries, both of which didn’t take issue with the criticism of specific cancer quackeries, such as Entelev, but rather with her statement above about mind-body “healing.” Neither of the commentators were happy that Cassileth had questioned the central dogma of alternative medicine, which is what I’ve been discussing the last couple of days. That central dogma is that if you wish for it hard enough your mind can heal you of anything. The corollary of this central dogma is that if you are ill it is your fault for not having the right “intent,” attitude, and thoughts and therefore not doing the right things and/or not believing hard enough. It’s not for nothing that I have likened alternative medicine to religion or the New Age woo that is The Secret, and these authors simply reinforce that view. First up is radiation oncologist and practitioner of “integrative oncology” Brian D. Lawenda, MD, who pens Quackery, Placebos, and Other Thoughts: An Integrative Oncologist’s Perspective.

In the first part of his article, Lawenda protests loudly, arguing that “not all therapies categorized as ‘alternative,’ ‘nonconventional,’ or ‘unconventional’ are completely ineffective.” I suppose it depends on what you mean by “completely ineffective.” Personally, when I say “completely ineffective,” I mean “indistinguishable from placebo.” That’s the usual definition of “ineffective” in medical circles, and it is a description that applies to the vast majority of “integrative oncology,” including acupuncture, therapeutic touch, reiki, and the like. In the case of acupuncture, for instance, it doesn’t matter where you stick the needles or even if you stick the needles in at all (a toothpick twirled against the skin will do as well or better). In other words, in the case of acupuncture, the effects are entirely nonspecific. Indeed, Lawenda’s claim that these therapies are being used in an “evidence-based” manner is almost as overblown as the claims that quacks make; real “evidence-based” use of the vast majority of these modalities would be not to use them at all. They don’t work. That doesn’t stop Lawenda from advocating placebo medicine. But first he has to remonstrate with Cassileth over her characterization of “mind-body” medicine:

One area of controversy that comes up often in integrative oncology circles is whether or not there is an association between chronic stress and cancer-specific outcomes. Dr. Cassileth asserts that the association between chronic stress and cancer development, progression, and recurrence has not been definitively established. Those who support this view might categorize as quackery the claim that stress reduction (eg, through lifestyle changes, mind-body therapies, etc) can improve cancer-specific outcomes.

Those who believe that chronic stress and cancer are linked cite data that support this claim. In particular, there are clinical studies[7] that report improvements in cancer-specific outcomes in patients who are taught stress management techniques. Furthermore, researchers continue to identify chronic stress as a causative factor in numerous pathophysiologic processes that are known to be associated with the development, progression, and recurrence of various cancers (eg, stimulation of systemic inflammation and oxidation, impairment of immune function, increases in insulin resistance and weight gain, etc).[8]

Lawenda overstates his case massively. The evidence that improving “attitude” improves cancer-specific survival is of shockingly low quality. There’s just no “there” there. As I’ve said before, that’s not to say that psychotherapy and other modalities designed to improve a patient’s mood and mental state might not be useful. Certainly, they can improve quality of life, used in the proper situation. However, there just isn’t any evidence that is even mildly convincing that such modalities can improve a patient’s chances of surviving his cancer.

I also know that Lawenda is laying down pure, grade-A woo when I see him retreating into the favorite alt-med trope, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” and claiming that “many alternative therapies, once believed by conventional medical practitioners to be merely placebos, have now been shown to have proven therapeutic value (eg, acupuncture, numerous botanical extracts, meditation).” Well, no. Acupuncture has not been convincingly shown to have therapeutic value for any condition, and it’s no surprise that botanical extracts might be effective for some things; they are, after all, drugs. Adulterated drugs with lots of impurities whose potency can vary widely from lot to lot, but drugs nonetheless. He even attacks antidepressants based on more recent evidence suggesting that they might not be as effective as previously thought and in some cases might not be better than placebo, an idea ably countered by James Coyne.

Lawenda’s rebuke, however, is nothing compared to what comes next. Remember Cassileth’s dismissal of the findings of a “Yale surgeon” who claimed that support groups improved cancer survival? Here comes that Yale surgeon! Yes, indeed. It’s Bernie Siegel, and he’s pissed, proclaiming that The Key to Reducing Quackery Lies in Healing Patients and Treating Their Experience. Of course, his carefully cultivated image of being the ultimate nice guy and caring physician can’t be endangered; I only infer his annoyance from the tone of his response. I also infer a lot from the fact that, unlike Lawenda and Cassileth, who at least include some references taken from the peer-reviewed scientific literature to support their points, Siegel cites exactly one reference, and one reference only, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward. Lawenda cites mostly poor quality studies, but at least he tries by citing studies. Siegel, on the other hand, seems to think he is the Great and Powerful Oz (Dr. Oz or the Wizard of Oz, take your pick) and that you should just take his pronouncements on faith because he is so awesome. I will admit that Siegel probably has a point when he says that better communication could potentially reduce the incidence of cancer patients turning to quackery, but even making this reasonable point he overstates his case when he says that quackery would “diminish greatly” if doctors would just learn to communicate better. There’s a lot more to the appeal of quackery than having a doctor who can’t communicate, much of which wouldn’t even come close to disappearing, even if every doctor turned into a Bernie Siegel clone with respect to showing incredible empathy to patients.

Siegel then dives right in, relying on the sheer force of that awesome empathy of his to rip Cassileth a new one for daring to criticize his work:

Our emotions govern our internal chemistry, and hope is therapeutic. We know that laughter enhances survival time in cancer patients, while loneliness has a negative effect. When a Yale graduate student did a study on our support group members and it showed increased survival time for the group’s members, his professor told him that couldn’t be true and made him change the control group so that everything came out equal. Doctors don’t study survival and the power of the mind.

Which is, of course, utter nonsense, leavened with more than a little conspiracy mongering. Doctors have been studying the “power of the mind” and survival for a very long time. What Siegel doesn’t like is that they haven’t found that the mind is nearly as powerful as Siegel would like to believe. It’s a topic I’ve been writing about since the very beginning. There’s a reason for the central dogma of alternative medicine; it’s very appealing to believe that sheer force of will or thinking happy thoughts can heal us of serious diseases. Talk about the ultimate form of “empowerment”!

Siegel then goes completely off the deep end:

The mind and energy will be therapies of the future. I know of patients who were not irradiated because the therapy machine was being repaired and no radioactive material was reinserted. The radiation therapist told me about it because he was feeling terrible. I told him he didn’t know what he was saying to me. “You’d have to be an idiot to not know you weren’t treating people for a month—so obviously they had side effects and shrinking tumors, which was why you assumed they were being treated.” He said, “Oh my God, you’re right.” I couldn’t get him to write an article about it. I also have patients who have no side effects because they get out of the way and let the radiation go to their tumor.

Yes, an unsubstantiated anecdote about an apparently incompetent radiation oncology tech who didn’t notice that his radiation machine wasn’t actually delivering radiation trumps evidence, apparently. (One wonders how the machine still functioned if its source wasn’t re-inserted. Most such machines have a warning light or won’t turn on if the source isn’t properly in place.) Siegel’s article is so full of alt-med tropes and a heaping’ helpin’ of what can best be described as pure woo. Besides recommending his own books (one of which I actually have on my shelf but have not gotten around to reading), Siegel recommends The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing by William Bengston, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles by Bruce Lipton, and The Psychobiology of Gene Expression by Ernest Rossi. Lipton, as you recall, is a cell biologist who abandoned “conventional” biology after having some sort of mystical revelation about cells that led him to conclude that God must exist and that “holistic” therapies work. I hadn’t heard of the other two, but Siegel describes Bengston thusly:

Bengston cured mice of cancer in a controlled study with the energy conducted through his hands. I was healed of an injury in the same way by healer Olga Worral many years ago. We definitely need to test potential therapies to verify whether or not they are useful, but we also have to keep an open mind to what might be possible, and we must understand that we are treating a patient’s experience and not just a disease.

It turns out that Bengston preaches exactly the sort of quackery that Cassileth quite correctly castigated, namely that energy healing can cure cancer! From his own website:

Can energy healing really cure cancer? Is it possible for you to heal someone’s terminal illness with your bare hands? Is the Western medical community ready for a fundamental change in its approach to treatment?…Dr. William Bengston invites you to decide by taking a journey with him into the mystery and power of hands-on healing. Drawing on his 30 years of rigorous research, unbelievable results, and mind-bending questions, Bengston challenges us to totally rethink what we believe about our ability to heal.

As there so frequently is after a book advertisement, there are blurbs with people saying how great Bengston’s book is. Guess who gave Bengston a plug. Yes, Bernie Siegel. I must say, I had no idea that Siegel was so deep into woo. Elsewhere in his article he says he had chronic Lyme disease and was helped by homeopathic remedies. He even says that he “knows they work” because of his “experience of having the symptoms of the disease alleviated.” It doesn’t get much quackier than energy healing and homeopathy. They are the two most ridiculous quackeries out there, and Bernie Siegel is promoting them both.

Siegel concludes:

I was a pediatric surgeon and a general surgeon, and I know how powerful my words were to the children—and adults—who believed in me. I had no problem deceiving children into health by labeling vitamin pills as medications to prevent nausea and hair loss, or telling them the alcohol (Drug information on alcohol) sponge would numb their skin (and of course, sharing this with their parents, who helped empower their child’s belief). The mind and attitude are powerful healing forces. The mind and body do communicate, so I work with patients’ dreams and drawings and have diagnosed illnesses from them. I have yet to meet a physician who was told in medical school that Carl Jung correctly diagnosed a brain tumor by interpreting a patient’s dream.

This may not seem related to the subject of quackery, but it is—because it is about how to train doctors so that they know how to provide hope and potential to patients and how to use the mind and placebo effects. Doctors’ “wordswordswords” can become “swordswordswords” and kill or cure patients. I know a man who had cancer and needed cataract surgery so he could enjoy the life that remained to him with restored vision. His health plan denied the surgery because they expected him to die within 6 months and didn’t want to spend the money. He died in a week. The Lockerbie Bomber was released by the Scottish authorities because he was dying of cancer. He went back home to the Middle East and survived for over 3 years— and that is no coincidence.

Note the mind-body dualism (“the mind and body do communicate”). Of course they do, because the mind is the brain, and the brain is in constant communication with the body! That doesn’t mean you can think yourself healthy. Remember how I discussed some time ago the way that this increasing emphasis on placebo medicine among promoters of “integrative medicine.” As I’ve said so many times before, the reason IM fans have taken this position is because they’re finally being forced to accept that high quality evidence shows that most alt-med nostrums rebranded as “CAM” or “integrative medicine” produce nonspecific effects no better than placebo. So these nonspecific effects get relabeled as the “powerful placebo,” as proponents of “integrating” quackery into real medicine pivot on the proverbial dime and say that’s how their favored therapies worked all along, by firing up placebo effects! It’s pure paternalism, as well, as I have discussed multiple times.

Siegel claims he’s “unleashing the healing power” in each of us, but what he is really doing is advocating a return to the paternalistic, unquestioned, shaman-healer so common in so many societies in pre-scientific times. In ancient Egypt, physicians were also priests; both functions were one, which made sense given how little effective medicine there was. Praying to the gods for patients to get better was in most cases as good as anything those ancient physicians could do. Also notice how, to Siegel, apparently the end justifies the means. Siegel can deceive patients about vitamins and alcohol sponges because he thinks it’s all for a greater good, really believing that he is so all-powerful a shaman-healer that his words alone can have a huge effect in curing or killing patients. That’s how he appears to be justifying the deception. He needs to get a clue (and some humility) and realize that, although placebo effects are important confounders in clinical trials, it’s a huge stretch to ascribe such awesome power to their effects. What Siegel is describing is magic, not science; religion, not medicine. Thinking does not make it so.

Unfortunately, Cassileth doesn’t seem to realize that, at their core, the “unconventional” aspects of the “integrative medicine” that she is promoting are little or no different than what Siegel promotes. In essence, “integrative medicine” is all about “integrating” magical thinking into scientific medicine. Acupuncture, “mind-body” interventions, reiki, and all the various quackademic medicine that has infiltrated medical academia relies on the same ideas, the same magical thinking, that we see on display from Bernie Siegel. Cassileth might think herself so much more rational and “evidence-based” by attacking the most egregrious cancer quackery, but she’s only fooling herself.

So, Bengston healed mice of cancer with energy transmitted through his hands? I myself once cured a mouse problem with the power of my hands, though the energies were transmitted via a heavy book that squashed a mouse that was lurking on my living room bookshelf.

Bernie Siegel, you’re too much! The healing power of laughter in cancer patients can easily be trialed – just let them read Siegel’s articles.

Side note: now that Ebay has banned sale of reiki services, I wondered if bereft patients could still turn to other forms of woo, such as oxygen therapy for their diseases. Might Ebay have banned “food grade” hydrogen peroxide, too?

Before I comment on the post, I’d like to mention that a few weeks ago, in the wee hours, I chanced upon a documentary on television about Bob Marley- by pure happenstance, I tuned into the last days: seems he had consulted with a Dr Issels in Germany after receiving a poor prognosis from oncologists. It was terribly pathetic to see poor, emaciated Bob, weakly making his way through the snow, wearing a woolen hat, probably freezing. He stayed for months and felt he was improving but died upon his return to IIRC Miami.
Wouldn’t he have better spent his last days surrounded by family, friends, music and his drug of choice at home?

Bengston cured mice of cancer in a controlled study with the energy conducted through his hands. [Siegel] was healed of an injury in the same way by healer Olga Worral many years ago. We definitely need to test potential therapies to verify whether or not they are useful, but we also have to keep an open mind to what might be possible

Laying on hands may be an effective treatment in fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, but here in the real world that treatment method was debunked by a fourth-grade science fair project. So this particular treatment method actually has been tested, and found not to work. It’s all well and good to have an open mind, but not so open that it falls out.

Bengston and his amazing healing abilities (so powerful that they even healed the control group of mice) were discussed at some length in a recent comment thread. Anyone interested in reading more might find his article in Issue 2 of Edge Science of interest. BTW there is plenty of woo in those Edge Science magazines, varying from the intriguing to the ridiculous; a goldmine for those with a taste for such material.

Unfortunately, I am dreadfully familiar with most of this, courtesy of the Progressive Radio Network, where Bengtson, Siegal, energy healing and stress-as-causation are frequent topics; Lipton has appeared on various shows at the aforementioned festering sinkhole of un-reason. That ‘words/swords’ meme sounds awfully like the AIDS denialism belief that stress and fear following the diagnosis *kills* people, not HIV.

Recently, PRN’s head honcho has been lovingly recounting his storied history as a researcher and intuitive healer: seems that he did both anti-aging ( nutrition) and *psi* research at the Institute for Applied Biology with the blessing of Pauling himself.

He had a group of healers pray for cancer-ridden mice and *Voila!*- they were cured. Of course, there is much more drivel along these lines that I won’t trouble you with: it all boils down to the remarkable powers of the mind and spirit.
Gag.

Woo-meisters spread these ridiculous ideas in order to trump the scientific community- which they are not a part of and barely comprehend- at least in their audience’s minds. I believe that often both the proselytiser and the proselytised harbour a barely concealed hatred and envy of the more educated because they are not part of that *elitist* group, as they label them reproachfully. Read Natural News article by MIke and you’ll see what I mean. This animosity accounts for much of the venom we encounter: they reject the standard and conjure up a new aristocracy of pseudo-intellectual poppycock purveyors who enthrall their un-suspecting followers whose adulation fills in the missing ego- enhancement that rightly should have been supplied by the entire world’s respect. Fame, fame, fame** continually evades them so they seek out followers instead.

Yes, their research is rejected because it is truly *independent* and free of entrenched interests- and INDEPENDENT of sense, ethics and utility as well.

There was a lot of discussion about Bengston and his followers right here on RI recently. Check the thread on using reiki on dogs–several reiki “masters” wrote in to defend and extoll Bengston, and of course the RI regulars ripped them to shreds.

By the way, Bengston holds seminars across the US and can teach anyone to cure cancer using energy healing in a weekend for a few thousand dollars. He also teaches “distance energy healing.” On the reiki thread someone in Toronto claimed she can do the same thing.

Partway through the article, going through that central dogma, I remembered a post of mine on Bruce Lipton, then I saw you mention his last name. He’s definitely into the positive thinking, and has some weird leaps in how he tries to justify it.

“many alternative therapies, once believed by conventional medical practitioners to be merely placebos, have now been shown to have proven therapeutic value (eg, acupuncture, numerous botanical extracts, meditation).”

It seems to me that the various plant-inspired chemo drugs (taxol, vincristine) were discovered without any help at all from alt-med. Unless there are *specific* botanical extracts from the alt-med pharmacopeia that later entered mainstream cancer treatment, this is like arguing that
(1) Ayurvedic concoctions contain heavy metals like lead
(2) the cis-platin drugs are platinum compounds
(3) Therefore conventional medicine recognises the basical validity of Ayurveda.

Given that Bengston’s somehow able to cure subjects he isn’t even treating, aren’t we all under his care right now?

If you’ve *read his papers*, you’ve probably undergone the requisite quantum entanglement to come under his healing umbrella.

I, for one, am perfectly willing to believe that chronic stress leads to some diseases, and that techniques like meditation can help remove stress and reduce the risk or impact of those diseases. Hypertension might be one such disease.

Naturally, this would need to be verified on a disease-by-disease basis. While I suspect that chronic stress could cause, say, back pain, TMJ, and various sleep disorders, I’ve yet to hear adequate evidence that it leads to influenza, type 1 diabetes, or cancer just to name a few.

The first rule of blogging is that you don’t talk about blogging. Oh, wait. That’s not it. I talk about blogging all the time. The first rule of blogging is: When the world is throwing easy blogging material at you, for cryin’ out loud, go for it. Yeah, that’s it.

I literally LOL’d at this. Ah Orac, always enjoyable to read even when I get so angry at some of the antics you blog about.

whatever “supporting patient well-being in general” means.

Supporting positive thinking and calmness. But then, why not just meditate or read a book?

Seriously she’s for biofeedback… sigh.. that was debunked in my high school psych class.

Can energy healing really cure cancer? Is it possible for you to heal someone’s terminal illness with your bare hands? Is the Western medical community ready for a fundamental change in its approach to treatment?…Dr. William Bengston invites you to decide by taking a journey with him into the mystery and power of hands-on healing. Drawing on his 30 years of rigorous research, unbelievable results, and mind-bending questions, Bengston challenges us to totally rethink what we believe about our ability to heal.

This sounds like an intro to some sort of psychic reading TV show… or a magic show. Either way.

Regarding the alleged effects on patients of doctors giving them a poor prognosis, here’s a counter-anecdote.

My mother had been ill for years, and in 1981 her sister finally talked her into going to a doctor. The doctor was surprised she could walk into the office because her congestive heart failure was quite severe. He warned her that she had no more than 6 months to live. There was little they could do but prescribe diuretics (or at least that’s what I recall as a teen going off to college a long time ago).

Every time she went to the doctor, she was in worse shape than the last, and they estimated she’d die within 6 months. This went on for nearly two decades, and after the first few years she stopped paying attention to their prediction. The last few years, she was looking forward to an end to her suffering from peripheral neuropathy, arthritis, kidney disease, post-polio syndrome, etc. She was not fighting to live, though I think she mainly just took things day by day.

I know anecdotes aren’t data, but this is a pretty good counter to people who say that doctors kill people by saying have only so much time to live, and that people die because they don’t think positive thoughts. (Yes, I’m sure people will say she was in pain because of negative thoughts. But she kept as active as she could, despite the pain, and was a voracious reader who sewed most of her own clothing.)

Added to Kathryn – a wonderful man at my church was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive prostate cancer at stage IV (he had had a clean PSA only two months early, suddenly got very sick and a scan found prostate cancer with bone mets and I think the others were liver and lung). There were several times he himself swore he was going to die and would be sick for several weeks until new treatment would restabilize him.

He actually lived just over two years after diagnosis. He was always on the edge with chemo doing its best to just give him more time. Though it wasn’t the same life he had before, it gave him peace to get as much time as possible with his wife, manage and plan his own funeral, spend time with my husband and I after our marriage, etc.

What part of “promoting tumor cell survival and disease progression” is unclear? Chemo interacted with the existing microenvironment in a way that was harmful.

“The expression of WNT16B in the prostate tumor microenvironment attenuated the effects of cytotoxic chemotherapy in vivo, promoting tumor cell survival and disease progression. These results delineate a mechanism by which genotoxic therapies given in a cyclical manner can enhance subsequent treatment resistance through cell nonautonomous effects that are contributed by the tumor microenvironment.”

If anything else, it highlights a process that certain tumor cells can use to become resistant to chemotherapy,k a process that, since it is more fully understood, can now be better researched and used to develop more effective therapies to stop this process.

But of course, ignorant individuals like marg cannot understand this. Of course,, reading comprehension was never a strong suit for him/her.

If anything else, it highlights a process that certain tumor cells can use to become resistant to chemotherapy,k a process that, since it is more fully understood, can now be better researched and used to develop more effective therapies to stop this process.

Yes, absolutely. The authors of the study are actually affiliated with my department, and I’m friendly with several of them. I can’t wait to show them how the woo-peddlers are twisting their research, I’m sure they’ll get a kick out of that.

Could someone please enlighten me on the criteria for successful chemotherapy. My understanding is that a drug is deemed successful if it shrinks a tumor by a certain percentage for a certain period of time. I would like to know by what percentage and for what period of time. I would also like to know the correlation between shrinking tumors and long-term survival.

@AdamG
I would say that “promoting disease progression” would mean promoting the growth of cancer.

I knew a man who grew a large inoperable tumor WHILE receiving aggressive chemotherapy for bladder cancer. After this tumor was discovered he was given an aggressive last ditch combination of chemotherapy and radiation which essentially killed him. I also know two women with supposedly aggressive cancers, one of them breast cancer, who said no to conventional treatment and are still alive 15 years later with the cancer still in their bodies. While you call me an ignoramus there are things about cancer that you do not know that would fill several encyclopedias. And trust me, the day is coming when pharmaceutical companies will be looking at multi-billion dollar class-action suits for promoting cancer drugs which they knew to be deadly and ineffective, and oncologists will be lucky if they don’t get dragged into it.

Alrighty then, the majority of your anecdotes are heartwarming and still not backed up by studies. i am sad when anyone dies of cancer but what do you have to offer that is proven to work better than chemo?.

@beamup
What is meaningless about a question asking what the criteria for a successful cancer drug are? I would think that is a crucial question for cancer research. If there are different criteria for different cancers, I would like to know that too. There are people on this discussion board who have the answers to this question.

Don’t bother to respond if all you have to offer is innuendo and ignorance.

Could someone please enlighten me on the criteria for successful chemotherapy. My understanding is that a drug is deemed successful if it shrinks a tumor by a certain percentage for a certain period of time. I would like to know by what percentage and for what period of time. I would also like to know the correlation between shrinking tumors and long-term survival.

Goalpost shift much? Or could it be that you simply have no response to the fact that you’ve conclusively been shown to simply be making up lies with no basis in reality?

I’m pretty sure that your questions are quite meaningless, too, though this isn’t my field. I don’t believe that any hard-and-fast rule such as you demand exists. It’s all relative to what kind of cancer, how advanced, what other options are available, etc. And tumor shrinkage isn’t necessarily the endpoint being used – survival times are more often the metric.

I would say that “promoting disease progression” would mean promoting the growth of cancer.

Pop quiz – what was promoting it, and relative to what baseline? The answers do not support your claims.

Since when is “promoting tumor cell survival and disease progression” and “promoting the spread of cancer”, which you seem to keep dodging, marg.

Change goalposts much?

And my anecdote. I had a friend of mine whose father had colon adneocarcinoma. An aggressive treatment of radiation and chemotherapy was able to get his cancer into remission, and he was able to see his son graduate high school.

So my anecdote trumps your anecdote.

Either way, you maliciously assume that since chemo didn’t work on your so-called “friend”, it must be totally ineffective, which is a logical fallacy.

And of course, the old “pharma shill” gambit, which is a classic sign of a troll quack.

The point you’re missing, Marg, is that this article’s findings don’t argue against the use of chemotherapy. They argue for better chemotherapy. The authors themselves acknowledge this when they state

However, the complexity of the damage response program also supports strategies that are focused on inhibiting upstream master regulators, such as NF-κB45, that may be more efficient and effective adjuncts to cytotoxic therapies, provided their side effects are tolerable.

No treatment is 100% effective. That there are researchers working to improve the treatment’s efficacy is not an indictment of the entire treatment.

@beamup
You are still resorting to insults without providing a single meaningful criterion.

@Narad
I am not acquainted with Jonathan Chamberlain. I also don’t know what bringing up Gonzalez has to do with the statement that disease progression in cancer usually leads to metastases. Agree with the statement or disagree. Don’t sidetrack.

You are still resorting to insults without providing a single meaningful criterion.

Quoth Beamup:

I’m pretty sure that your questions are quite meaningless, too, though this isn’t my field. I don’t believe that any hard-and-fast rule such as you demand exists. It’s all relative to what kind of cancer, how advanced, what other options are available, etc. And tumor shrinkage isn’t necessarily the endpoint being used – survival times are more often the metric.

Yes or no – do you admit that you were completely wrong about that paper claiming that chemo promoted the spread of cancer?

@AdamG
I stand by the first half of the statement and amend the second to “which has now been shown as potentially ineffective or detrimental depending on the surrounding microenvironment”. I don’t see how any chemotherapy can now be administered without further studies on how each and every drug affects/is affected by this microenvironment.

@Beamup
There may be no hard and fast rule, but there have to be guidelines for particular cancers. I would like to hear from someone who is familiar with these guidelines and can give examples.

and amend the second to “which has now been shown as potentially ineffective or detrimental depending on the surrounding microenvironment”.

Still false; a correct statement would be “the effectiveness of which varies depending on the surrounding microenvironment.” Chemotherapy works. This enhances our understanding of the factors contributing to how well it works, nothing more.

I don’t see how any chemotherapy can now be administered without further studies on how each and every drug affects/is affected by this microenvironment.

When we already know that they are effective, it’s perfectly reasonable to continue to administer them while further research progresses on how to make them even more effective.

There may be no hard and fast rule, but there have to be guidelines for particular cancers. I would like to hear from someone who is familiar with these guidelines and can give examples.

As a pure diversion from the complete and utter failure of your claims, I gather.

@Beamup
“When we already know that they are effective”. These would be criteria for which I am asking. By what criteria do we deem them effective?

@Narad
A groundbreaking 14 year study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in December 2004 called “The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to 5-year Survival in Adult Malignancies”.

Researchers at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Northern Sydney Cancer Centre studied the 5-year survival rates of chemotherapy on 22 types of cancers in the US and Australia.

They studied 154,971 Americans and Australians with cancer, age 20 and older, that were treated with conventional treatments, including chemotherapy.
Only 3,306 had survival that could be credited to chemotherapy.

Study Results: “The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1 % in The USA”

Study Conclusion: “As the 5-year survival rate in Australia is now over 60%, it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.”

@AdamG
Read it. To change the percentage of effectiveness from 2% to 8 or 10% does not make chemotherapy much more impressive. In no other avenue of life would we consider that kind of success rate acceptable.

@AdamG
If the pharmaceutical industry were not barking up the wrong tree, we would have had better results by now, considering that they’ve been barking up this particular tree for at least half a century.

If the pharmaceutical industry were not barking up the wrong tree, we would have had better results by now, considering that they’ve been barking up this particular tree for at least half a century.

After only 70 years we have effective treatments for some types of leukemia, improved 5 year survival of breast cancer patients to over 90% and cure more than 85% of testicular cancer, to name but a few successes. By comparison, herbalism and other traditional approaches have been trying to find a cure for cancer for thousands of years with absolutely dismal results.

One crucial point being that the ‘ground-breaking’ study somehow left off *all the varieties of cancer* for which chemotherapy is most effective. Another point being that ‘5-year survival’ is simply not appropriate for breast cancer (among others) where delayed relapse is the rule rather than the exception, and adjuvant chemotherapy produces a greater survival-rate improvement *after five years*.

Marg, let’s pretend for a moment that you are a grade school teacher. Teaching, say, math. Got that?

Okay, let’s move on with this thought experiment. Suppose you have a particular analogy that you teach all your students which is meant to help them understand fractions. And for most of your students, the analogy does indeed work, and most of those students “get it.”

Okay. Now suppose you find out that for some students, maybe 1 in every 1000, the analogy doesn’t work. Those rare students just don’t understand the analogy and as a result, they are actually worse at fractions after you’ve presented them with this analogy.

Okay. Now, with those as the facts in place, how fair is it for someone to ignore the 999 out of 1000 students that are helped by your analogy, focus on the 1 out of 1000 that your analogy confuses, and characterize you on that basis as “promoting the spread of ignorance”?

Now you might protest, “wait a minute! We have discussed no data on how these recently-discovered side effects of chemotherapy compare in strength to the cancer-killing effects of the chemotherapy – how can you compare it to the specific figure of ‘helps 999, harms 1’?” That’s a very good point! Except that you, by bringing it up, show yourself to be a big hypocrite. Because you showed NO interest in “how do the side-effects compare to the cancer-killing effects in strength?”; you talked about these side-effects as if they were the ONLY effects. Whether that was deliberate deception on your part or merely ignorance, it fatally undermines your credibility.

To change the percentage of effectiveness from 2% to 8 or 10% does not make chemotherapy much more impressive.

So where did you pull that number from? It’s not in the link.

In no other avenue of life would we consider that kind of success rate acceptable.

Say we have a treatment that results in 80% of patients surviving a disease with high mortality. Say we have a second treatment that, in conjunction with the first, results in 90% of patients surviving. According to you, we would reject the second treatment because the success rate is an “unacceptable” 10%.

I can’t see what Marg is on about… whether the available chemotherapy options are actually counterproductive (as she first claimed) or simply not good enough (as she’s claiming now), the answer is the same. No-one is forcing her to take them. If she develops cancer, she is free to die with as little therapy as she likes.

If the problem is that medical researchers are wasting their money by barking up the wrong tree, all she has to do is prove them wrong by producing the better chemotherapy herself.

@Krebiozen
Say you have a type of breast cancer that kills women in 8 years. It takes four years for it to become palpable, so through breast examination it is discovered in the fifth year, but with a mammogram it is discovered in the first or the second. Prior to mammograms, the women with this cancer die three years after the discovery of their cancer; after large scale mammography is introduced the women live 7 years. Nothing about the cancer has changed, but there has been a huge increase in 5-year survival, giving the illusion that something has improved when in fact nothing has. The same can be said about early detection of prostate cancer. You have no way of knowing how much the percentages you cite are due to people living longer simply because their cancer was detected earlier and not because of any treatment they might be receiving.

BTW note the title of the study, which is “Treatment-induced damage to the tumor microenvironment promotes prostate cancer therapy resistance through WNT16B.” In particular note the words “Treatment-induced damage”.

I had a peek at MarkH’s blog and there is no comparison to the original. But I wonder if the ‘nym lifter might be someone who holds a grudge against you…. you-know-who .
However, the spelling and grammar aren’t totally atrocious, so maybe not.

The same can be said about early detection of prostate cancer. You have no way of knowing how much the percentages you cite are due to people living longer simply because their cancer was detected earlier and not because of any treatment they might be receiving.

Please explain, in detail, what lead-time bias has to do with any position that you have advanced previously.

But I wonder if the ‘nym lifter might be someone who holds a grudge against you…. you-know-who .

Oh, right the Swampjack. I’ll never forget Ol’ Whatshisname. I dunno, at 7:20 his time, he might not have been fully in his cups. Or maybe he’s been fervently working the chapbook or something. Beats me.

@Narad
What’s with this habit of assigning essay questions? I began with the statement that the biggest purveyors of quackery in cancer treatment were oncologists promoting chemotherapy drugs. Pointing out that increased survival rates could be due to earlier detection and not to any drug intervention is entirely consistent with that position.

@Marg: Your non-answer straightforwardly indicates that you have attempted to change the subject. You have floridly demanded answers to your own questions as a control attempt, so perhaps you could unclench long enough to answer a simple one.

Let me rephrase Narad’s question for you. What evidence do you have that early detection was solely responsible for the cancer survival rate? The difference between you and a scientist is that you ask questions, while scientists look for answers.

Marg, what, specifically, is the treatment?
I’ve asked 3 times now. You continue to cite that study, but you do not understand its methods or conclusions. You want us to be shocked by these results but you can’t even identify what drug or drugs they used.

Marg, hypothesis is the second step of scientific inquiry, after observation, not the last. Humans are not infallible; after a hypothesis is formed, one must test it to be sure. If it fails, there’s nothing to be upset over, just move on to the next one.

What’s with this habit of assigning essay questions? I began with the statement that the biggest purveyors of quackery in cancer treatment were oncologists promoting chemotherapy drugs. Pointing out that increased survival rates could be due to earlier detection and not to any drug intervention is entirely consistent with that position.

Uh, you do realize, don’t you, that that’s why RCTs are so complex and are designed to try to control for lead time bias? That’s why clinical trial subjects are stratified by stage, for example. Differentiating lead time bias from a real effect on cancer outcomes is difficult for screening tests, but not as much for treatment. The patients have all been diagnosed with cancer and grouped according to clinical-pathological stages for which the expected survival is known, all before undergoing treatment.

The Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania has no problem with Reiki as an adjunctive treatment:

And neither do I if reiki is correctly described as a spiritual/religious modality and its practitioners are treated the same way as chaplains, allowed to see patients, but no claims made for them being able to actually treat anything.

@Orac
My comment about lead time was not for current experiments or for experiments going forward. My comment relates to claims of improvements in survival as compared to a time when early detection through the use of mammography was not widespread.

And as I pointed out even before you made that objection, Marg, you did not even acknowledge THE EXISTENCE of cancer-killing effects of chemotherapy, MUCH LESS try to assign any kind of number or any form of quantification to them, MUCH LESS try to provide any reasonable assessment of how those cancer-killing effects compare in strength to the effects recently discovered that promote tumor cell survival. That makes you A BIG FLAMING HYPOCRITE when you try to say “Antaeus, the true figure isn’t 99.9% : 0.1% !” Whatever the true figure is, it’s even farther from the false ‘figure’ of 0% : 100% that an unwary observer would have taken away from YOUR wholly biased misrepresentation of the paper’s conclusions.

I am not TRYING to provide figures, I am trying to explain the PRINCIPLE. I am trying to explain to a WILLFULLY IGNORANT PERSON (this would be you, Marg) that “One of the effects of chemotherapy is that some tumor cells are actually helped to survive because their cell-repair mechanisms get triggered, and disease progression in these cells is heightened” and “The effect of chemotherapy is to trigger the cell-repair mechanisms of tumor cells, thus resulting in disease progression in the patient” are NOT SYNONYMOUS STATEMENTS; anyone who takes a paper that concludes the former and announces its conclusions as the latter is at best completely misunderstanding and at worst deliberately deceiving. To say “chemotherapy promotes the spread of cancer,” which I will remind you again is EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID VERBATIM, is a big fat freaking lie unless you prove that whatever the chemotherapy does to promote the spread and survival of tumor cells WHOLLY OUTWEIGHS what chemotherapy does to limit and destroy tumor cells. Did the paper you quote come to any such conclusion? NO. Did you provide independent evidence of any kind to justify such a conclusion? NO. Did you even acknowledge that there was any need to consider the cancer-killing effects of chemotherapy, i.e. THE WHOLE FREAKING PURPOSE FOR WHICH WE ADMINISTER CHEMO IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THE ONLY REASON WE USE IT, in assessing whether the overall effect of chemotherapy is “the spread of cancer”? NO, you did not.

If I sound a bit snippish, my apologies. That was not my intent. My intent is TO SHAME YOU for being either A BIG FAT LIAR or AN IDIOT. I already TRIED being patient with you, Marg, and what was the result? You took EXACTLY the argument that I explained to you that you could not use in good faith, and you used it anyways. Where the hell do you get your nerve?? You big mewling hypocrite. “You failed to accurately represent the comparative strength of this effect in relation to the other, Antaeus.” Yes, and YOU failed completely to ACKNOWLEDGE ITS EXISTENCE so kindly take all your criticism of figures that are “way off” and SHOVE IT.

@Antaeus Feldspar
I am not easily shamed or bullied, the latter of which is what you are trying to do. From my perspective for the purposes of the patient it is entirely sufficient that “One of the effects of chemotherapy is that some tumor cells are actually helped to survive because their cell-repair mechanisms get triggered, and disease progression in these cells is heightened” to lead to the worsening of their condition and ultimately death. These chemo-resistant cells will then be the ones that go on to divide, creating one heck of a chemo resistant tumor. And where the hell do YOU get the nerve to try to bully me because I disagree with you?

@Antaeus Feldspar
I am not easily shamed or bullied, the latter of which is what you are trying to do.

No, bullying would be if I was saying “You should quit posting here, because I don’t like your point of view.” That’s far different from shaming you for your pathetic use of a double standard, where it’s a big problem if I don’t provide figures for the relative comparison of two factors that are accurate enough for your liking (in a thought experiment, no less) but it’s okay for you to completely ignore the existence of one of those two factors for your relative comparison.

It really is a pity you aren’t more easily shamed. It might have led to you actually being a decent person, if you had had conscience and shame to guide you.

From my perspective for the purposes of the patient it is entirely sufficient that “One of the effects of chemotherapy is that some tumor cells are actually helped to survive because their cell-repair mechanisms get triggered, and disease progression in these cells is heightened” to lead to the worsening of their condition and ultimately death. These chemo-resistant cells will then be the ones that go on to divide, creating one heck of a chemo resistant tumor.

Except that is not the conclusion of the paper and it is not a reasonable extrapolation from the conclusions of the paper, it is ENTIRELY PULLED OUT OF YOUR AR5E. It would be like me saying “I just discovered that there’s a service fee for setting up a Certificate of Deposit at my bank; that proves that setting up a CD at that bank leads to losing money!” If the service fee is one dollar and the interest I can expect to gain from the minimum deposit amount over the term of the CD is more than one dollar, then no, it does not lead to “losing money” as any sane honest person would understand the phrase. You as someone outside that description will doubtless have trouble comprehending that.

And where the hell do YOU get the nerve to try to bully me because I disagree with you?

Not because you disagree with me, Marg, but because you withhold information and argue dishonestly and maintain a double standard. THAT is why I shame you.

@Darwy
The authors may not be saying it, but given that the reason cancer is so deadly is the proliferation of multiple-drug-resistant cancer cells, they should certainly be asking the question whether the mechanism they discovered is implicated in this. Not to ask the question is dishonest.

Unfortunately I have to leave and can’t go into detail BUT
risk/ benefit analysis is considered with ALL medical procedures and treatments. It is. Furthermore, it is studied mathematically not by personal factors.
If you decide whether to buy something or not, you weigh the pros and cons casually: SBM has to do a whole lot more to justify using ANY procdure and doctors have to also weigh this information when they prescribe and discuss it with patients who have CHOICE.

@ Marg,
I don’t know what you mean, but if everyone would try to cure cancer without the help of a doctor, specialised in cancer, I think less people would survive.
Cancer isn’t a battle one can win if one has enough fighting spirit. One needs luck and good doctors. Especially the latter.

I wonder how the statistics would change if everyone took charge of their own healing.

We know the answer to that question since oncologists are now seeing cases of untreated cancers that they had previously only seen in old textbooks, thanks to people believing the sort of nonsense Chamberlain writes. For example, the following comment from a cancer surgeon on a UK medical professional site.

In the UK, there is the “cancer act” to protect patients from the claims of CAM in treating cancer, sadly this is seldom enforced. As a cancer surgeon and professor of medical humanities I can attest to the tragic consequences of patients with breast cancer refusing modern humane treatment in place of barbaric alternatives. I call them barbaric as it allowed me to follow the natural history of untreated disease. Although I rarely endorse the use of mastectomy, if there is one thing more barbaric than radical surgery, it’s the disease itself being allowed to run riot. The cancer leaves behind a rotting stinking ulcer and a swollen arm as the involved lymph nodes block the drainage from the lymphatics.

The authors may not be saying it, but given that the reason cancer is so deadly is the proliferation of multiple-drug-resistant cancer cells, they should certainly be asking the question whether the mechanism they discovered is implicated in this. Not to ask the question is dishonest.

Did Marg just say that the authors’ conclusions are wrong, and that they should change their results because *it’s just so obvious that chemo is bad*?

Narad,
I think Marg was asking you why you think Chamberlain’s endorsement of detoxifying foot bath says it all.

Marg – it’s because detoxifying foot baths don’t actually do anything to remove heavy metals or other toxins from your body. Someone less charitable than myself would call them a scam (and many have). You might check out the article titled “Do you really need to detox?” in Consumer Reports.

@Mephistopheles
What are you on about? There is far more to what Chamberlain says than foot baths. I didn’t even see a reference to foot baths. This is your MO, ladies and gentlemen, pick out on small item to stick your claws into and then rip it to shreds.

@Narad
Again, the link you provided about the patients cited by Chamberlain refers to one patient among twenty-something.

I have seen what chemo does when it doesn’t work. You destroy the person and then shrug and say, “sorry, it didn’t work, there is nothing more we can do. You can go home and die now.”

If the authors aren’t saying it , it is probably because they did draw that conclusion from the evidence. This study does not support your point. Do you have one that does? If the answer is no then you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

I have seen what chemo does when it doesn’t work. You destroy the person and then shrug and say, “sorry, it didn’t work, there is nothing more we can do. You can go home and die now.”

I’m puzzled by this notion that people with cancer who die despite the best treatment available die of the treatment, not of the cancer. It seems to me a very dangerous idea that is becoming more and more widespread, that cancer patients do better with no treatment at all. Why do you think the cancer destroyed the person, not the cancer? For just one example, take a look at the Gonzalez pancreatic cancer clinical trial; those on conventional treatment lived three times as long as those on Gonzalez’ ‘treatment’ (essentially no treatment at all). When you consider that pancreatic cancer has probably the worst prognosis of all cancers, I think this speaks volumes.

The authors may not be saying it, but given that the reason cancer is so deadly is the proliferation of multiple-drug-resistant cancer cells, they should certainly be asking the question whether the mechanism they discovered is implicated in this. Not to ask the question is dishonest.

And in the meantime, you are citing the paper as your source for what you admit the authors didn’t say. How do you justify that, Marg? Are you really so egotistical that you say, “Well, I’ve never published a paper in my life, but I know what these researchers should have concluded, so I’ll just announce my own personal views as being the conclusions they came to” and think that’s legitimate? Oh, that’s right, you’re hard of thinking, so I’ll give you the answer: No, that’s dishonest.

If chemotherapy helped 999 and harmed 1, I would have zero problem with it. The odds are rather worse.

And again, Marg, I don’t give a damn what you have “zero problem” with or don’t, because your judgment reeks like month-old tuna salad. In case I haven’t already explained this to you five or six times, my point is that your assessment methods fail. Given a chemotherapy method that killed 99.9% of the cells in a tumor and left 0.1% stronger, your assessment of that method would be “oh! Look at these 0.1% of cells, and ignore all the others! Obviously this method promotes the spread of cancer!” That is all we need to know to know that your assessment methods blow chunks.

And the fact that you present the flawed conclusions that your flawed assessment methods led to as if they were the conclusions of the paper means one of two things: you couldn’t understand what the paper actually said OR you deliberately chose to lie about what the paper said. It’s one or the other, Marg, but whichever one it is, you’re a fool if you think you have any credibility left.

And again, Marg, I don’t give a damn what you have “zero problem” with or don’t, because your judgment reeks like month-old tuna salad.

I regret to report the result of an inadvertent recent experiment: month-old tuna salad is pretty neutral-smelling, at least with jarred mayo. Never, ever, buy a seven-pound ham if you live alone, though.

I’m sure the authors will do what they think is necessary to follow up on the conclusions of their study. And so will others.

However… You said this:

From my perspective for the purposes of the patient it is entirely sufficient that “One of the effects of chemotherapy is that some tumor cells are actually helped to survive because their cell-repair mechanisms get triggered, and disease progression in these cells is heightened” to lead to the worsening of their condition and ultimately death.

Darwy said this:

It is not what the authors conclude, so any personal interpretation you use is faulty.

You said this:

The authors may not be saying it, but

To which you seem to be implying (and being wonderful in objecting every time someone tries to understand what you’re saying by accusing us of not understanding you) that their *own* conclusions are wrong because you think something else. If they haven’t said something in the conclusions, it’s not because they’re pretending the data didn’t say something and they don’t want to be going against the grain. They’re not saying it because it’s *not what the data showed*.

You’re the one starting off with a conclusion (chemo = bad) and working back from there.

The authors are saying that chemo is effective *but that it can be made to be more effective*. As others have pointed out, you can’t use the study based on *what you think they should have said instead*.

If you want to go on about chemo=bad, find a different source/publication/experiments that show it.

I’m going to call you Pegamily Rebooted. You sound alike.

This is your MO, ladies and gentlemen, pick out on small item to stick your claws into and then rip it to shreds.

I think in science, detail counts.

I have seen what chemo does when it doesn’t work. You destroy the person and then shrug and say, “sorry, it didn’t work, there is nothing more we can do. You can go home and die now.”

@Narad
Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients have experienced variations on the theme of “there is nothing more we can do” and “put your affairs in order”. If you want a citation, check out Jeff’s story in chapter 5 of Leigh Fortson’s “Embrace, Release, Heal”. Obviously your lot are not going to bother with scientific studies on the people who have been destroyed by chemo and sent home or to hospices to die.

@Antaeus Feldspar
If you have chemo that kills 99.9% of cancer cells and leaves 0.01% super cells, guess what that 0.01% is going to do. Yippee, hurray, multiply!!! And don’t give me that I don’t know what I’m talking about because patients with AML are given exactly that as a reason for needing the most stringent chemotherapy protocol possible.

@Herr Doktor Bimmler
I know two women diagnosed with supposedly aggressive cancers, one of them breast cancer, who are still alive 15 years after their initial diagnoses, with no chemotherapy or radiation, with the tumor still in their bodies, both of whom used diet and other alternative therapies to maintain their health. I know of people with the same cancers, diagnosed more recently, who obediently went through the standard protocols, and are now quite dead.

@Narad
I can certainly summarize. Chapter 5 of Leigh Fortson’s book is about “Jeff”, who had multiple myeloma, and came to the end of his extensive and ineffective treatment when he refused to have experimental chemotherapy that would have been injected directly into his spine and would have left him wheelchair bound if he survived. After he refused the treatment he was told to go home and put his affairs in order. Someone suggested he should go to see a man called Ben who lived in the desert. Ben treated him an hour a day and taught him a style of meditation in which he visualized cleaning up his spine. About six weeks after he began treatment with Ben, he was cancer free. This happened in 1991 and “Jeff” was still alive and free of cancer when Fortson’s book was published last year. According to some information on the internet, this “Ben” was Bill Bengston’s teacher.

Scoff all you want. Fortson’s book is not only about Jeff but also about a dozen others who healed from cancer against all odds using alternative treatments, many of them _after_ they came to the end of the road with conventional therapies, after their doctors told them “there is nothing more we can do”.

But of course you have better things to do than waste your time on things that challenge your conventional way of thinking. So go ahead and do them.

Someone suggested he should go to see a man called Ben who lived in the desert.

It’s hard to be a hermit these days. There you are, living in the desert, trying to enjoy some piece and quiet, but there’s a whole stream of visitors knocking at the door of your shack in the hope of one of the hermits will be called Ben.

@Antaeus Feldspar
If you have chemo that kills 99.9% of cancer cells and leaves 0.01% super cells, guess what that 0.01% is going to do. Yippee, hurray, multiply!!! And don’t give me that I don’t know what I’m talking about because patients with AML are given exactly that as a reason for needing the most stringent chemotherapy protocol possible.

And once again, Marg, you are completely avoiding the real issue.

You claimed that the paper was a source for the claim that “chemotherapy promotes the spread of cancer.”

The way that a reasonable person would interpret that phrase is that cancer spreads faster and becomes worse when chemotherapy is administered, as compared to what it does when chemotherapy is not administered.

Those are NOT the conclusions of the paper.

I’ll repeat that again.

Those are NOT the conclusions of the paper.

For you to claim that “chemotherapy promotes the spread of cancer” and cite the paper as the source of your claim is dishonest.

You may in fact yourself hold the opinion that chemo does no harm than good. That’s fine, if you want to believe it.

What’s not fine is telling the lie that “the researchers who wrote this peer-reviewed paper concluded that chemo does more harm than good!” when their paper concluded no such thing.

And as long as you continue telling that lie, and keep on dragging red herrings across the trail to try and distract people from the fact that you lied, people will continue to be angry with you.

I can certainly summarize. Chapter 5 of Leigh Fortson’s book is about “Jeff”

I did not ask you to summarize the book that you are now for some reason pitching, I suggested that you actually make the case that you have been advancing, which is that, in general, chemo is worse than no chemo, modulo shooting coffee up your ass (Chamberlain, oddly, suggests that flaxseed oil and coffee are interchangable for this purpose, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how this conclusion is arrived at).

But of course you have better things to do than waste your time on things that challenge your conventional way of thinking.

Marg, I strongly suspect that you would lose your ever-lovin’ sh*t if you really understood what’s “inside” my head. “Conventional way of thinking”? I’m willing to assert that the perceived world is isomorphic to the unconscious mind. One can leave the reservation and nonetheless arrive at very nearly the exact same conclusions, which do not involve the globular-blobular pudding-mind that seem to be so proud of.

Oh boy! I come back 10 hours later after an exceedingly pleasant day alongside the river, looking at outsider art, trendy shops, crumbling 19th century buildings, renovated 19th century buildings and sampling fabulous halal curry (after drinks) now it’s late and WHAT DO I FIND?

Oh Marg! I have been told countless stories about all of the people who conquered cancer without SBM, courtesy of alt med proselytisers: I’ve read articles, seen films, heard interviews and *exposes* BUT I have YET to see any one of them produce ONE study that illustrates the differences of which they speak.

On one hand, SBM has thousands of meticulous, complex studies that can be investigated and criticiqued and the alt med bastion has *stories*.

Obviously your lot are not going to bother with scientific studies on the people who have been destroyed by chemo and sent home or to hospices to die.

It’s up to you to provide citations. Not book references: peer-reviewed journal citations.

Anecdotal data: many of my family received many bouts of chemo (one even for different cancers throughout their life), all enjoyed years if not decades of extra life, with limited side effects. These were all elderly people, but all died due to natural causes or other illnesses, not chemo/cancer. See, my anecdotes equal your anecdotes. And that’s just my immediate family! (Oh, if only I could tell the show-stopper anecdote: but that gives away my ID)

I really don’t need to read a book to discover that cancer is a bad thing and that medicine is improving all the time. Or that some people die and some don’t, or that life is way more mysterious than we think. What I would like is some actual scientific statistics.

Show me the statistics that chemo is not helping the majority of people, that the risk/benefit comes down on the side of “better not try it”, or that you have any kind of proof at all outside of anecdotes. Give me something I can look up in Pubmed. (I can’t afford books at the moment, particularly just for a one-off read… Pubmed’s cheaper)

By the way, I see what you did there. Nice sidestep away from the point, which is that you lied, or attempted to put words into the authors’ mouths. Either the study supports your point or it doesn’t; either you think the authors are wrong or you don’t.

So I repeat:

You’re the one starting off with a conclusion (chemo = bad) and working back from there.

The authors are saying that chemo is effective *but that it can be made to be more effective*. As others have pointed out, you can’t use the study based on *what you think they should have said instead*.

If you want to go on about chemo=bad, find a different source/publication/experiments that show it.

I’ll give you another attempt:

Is this study truly proving your point? Or are you calling the authors liars?

Antaeus is right. You’re just trying to distract from the fact that you’ve been caught out.

But of course you have better things to do than waste your time on things that challenge your conventional way of thinking. So go ahead and do them.

Oh for… can you at least be original? Post some data, we’ll look. But we’re picky. We don’t want anecdotes or books, try some CDC (or other country) stats or Pubmed or something…

(To the regulars… Note the similarity between Pegamily and Marg. Both refuse to offer peer-reviewed citations. Both argue over semantics whilst refusing to admit that what they said is what they meant (or being vague so they don’t have to be pinned down). Both like distracting you away from the proven lies. Both like books as references. Both like the nirvana fallacy. Is this a sock puppet? Or should I dig out my post to Pegamily about how books are not science? … Incidentally, this is why I’m annoyed about ghost writers and alt-med. There are any number of people who want to “tell” their scare/survival story – that’s not science, that’s literature)

Someone suggested he should go to see a man called Ben who lived in the desert.

It’s hard to be a hermit these days. There you are, living in the desert, trying to enjoy some piece and quiet, but there’s a whole stream of visitors knocking at the door of your shack in the hope of one of the hermits will be called Ben.

And if you do find a hermit in the desert named Ben, frequently you come back to find your moisture farm destroyed by Imperial stormtroopers.

First known picture taken in 1908, he appeared to be between the ages of 35 and 40. In 1921 he moved to Chicago. Worked in a drugstore that was a front for a speak easy. 1923 promoting a wonder drug. Became known as Dr. Von Naturlich, traveling the midwest selling wonder drug until arrested in Peoria, Illinois. After jail, he became a magician named “Mr. Natural the Magnificent”. Eventually stopped and blacklisted before commiting an “Unnatural Act” on a female audience participant. Became a band leader of Mr. Natural and his Lyrical Lechers. Lived the high life with rich extravagent parties until he inexplicably gave it all up in 1928. Disappeared until 1938 when he started hanging around with the Old Pooperoo in Modesto, California. The Old Pooperoo eventually got rich working for gangsters and Mr. Natural disappeared again, supposedly spending the war years of World War 2 in India, China, Tibet and Afghanistan where he became a taxi driver and learned many strange and wonderful things. Came back to the States for “some stupid reason” in 1953 and meditated in the desert. 1960 some young groupies formed the first Mr. Natural fan club and his fame grew and in 1966 he was the epitome of the love and godlike perfection.

I thank you for your kind offer but I was refering to more visually-oriented outsider art: a long time ago ( in a galaxy far away?), I knew a fellow who used to set fires and another who produced bizarre *tableaux vivants* – in which I was often cast- more recently, I look at textural essays involving unlikely materials- like making trees out of steel nails and building room-like sculptures that move ( but only when no one is observing), torturing fabrics et al.
-btw- one of the idiots I survey calls himself the “New Mr Natural”.

One thing I’ve noticed is the naivete of alt med advocates who trash a study unaware that most of their objections have already been considered, studied and dismissed DECADES ago by real scientists. This is especially true about SMI.

They continue beating the same old dead horse that has long since vaporised and now exists only as a memory. I venture that the reason that the memory of the aforesaid deceased equine hasn’t been eradicated is because woo-meisters continuously resurrect it frequently, intensively and emotionally every chance they get. Some of them even produce documentaries on the subject.

I suspect it’s partly an ignorance of where to find that info. Then one day they happen across, say, RI, and then post a comment. Time is also an issue: who has the time to search blogs for previous content – especially when they think they are privileged to some inner knowledge that “it doesn’t work” (in the case of SBM).

I agree that it doesn’t die because proponents don’t let it: but it also doesn’t die because the people looking for info are possibly looking in the wrong places or just not bothering to look at all.

An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism
I have no great confidence in an author who follows the principle of “include the most dramatic claims available, even if you backtrack and admit that the claim is wrong within the same sentence“:Diagnoses have increased tenfold, although a careful assessment suggests that the true increase in incidences is less than half that.

All of us10th generation, candy-@ssed, elitist city-dwellers need to get back to Nature! And get infested with good old-fashioned natural parasites! THEN we’d be healthy.
But wait. I am healthy!
It’s Nature that makes me sneeze and itch.

I only skimmed the article, but it seemed to me to be an opinion piece which wanted to vaguely point to immune disorders without actually coming out and saying it. Ie. wanting to appear reasoned and balanced but adding the subtext of “why so much chronic illness?” that anti-vaxxers are so fond of.

Going back to this study, as you all attack the ultimate conclusion of a 2.1% contribution of chemotherapy to overall 5-year cancer survival, are you also raising questions about the numbers given for individual cancers?

Are we to be reassured by the 0% contribution in the case of pancreatic, kidney, bladder, and prostate cancer? The 1% contribution to survival from colon cancer? 1.4% for breast cancer? 0.7% for stomach cancer? 2% for lung cancer?

We are not looking for demonstrably superior options because we are putting all our resources into _this_ option, because apparently many of us have our heads stuck up our buttholes looking for light where it doesn’t shine. If biochemical approaches worked, you would think that after 70-odd years we’d something better to show for all the money and effort sunk into this.

Although I have spent most of weekend in idle diversion, I vaguely recalled a certain post, so prior to mixing myself a drink, I typed “chemotherapy effective” into the searchbox *et voila*! What do you know? A wealth of results came up, including the one I wanted: “So chemotherapy does work after all” ( Dec. 2011) in which our esteemed host explains how woo-meisters spread mis-information about chemoherapy including the infamous “2% gambit” and why that is not based in reality.. oh he can say it so much better than I can because he’s an expert and like it or not, they do exist.
At any rate, Cheers!

Marg: something better to show for all the money and effort sunk into this.
Seems to me that there’s actually been an awful lot of money (from patients) & effort (persuading patients to part with money) gone into ‘alternative’ treatments for cancer, over the last 70+ years. You’d think by now that there would be some actual published peer-reviewed data demonstrating how superior those alternative treatments actually are.

The numbers are cited are for individual cancers, not for cancers overall. @Denice, show me the studies that disprove those individual numbers. Show me where the authors of this study recanted.

Orac’s (and others’) objection to this study was that it excluded cancers such as leukemias where the results were more positive and therefore came up with an overall low percentage. Mind you the 5-year survival rate for AML is not so hot either, is it?

We are not looking for demonstrably superior options because we are putting all our resources into _this_ option, because apparently many of us have our heads stuck up our buttholes looking for light where it doesn’t shine.

Marg, there is a truism that was often invoked at NANAE, and I suggest that you ponder upon it: There Is No We. Moreover, if there were, you sure as shit wouldn’t be the spokesperson, so I further suggest that you quit dancing around.

Once upon a time, there was a doctor who wanted to prove that energy healing was real.

He performed experiments where, if the experiments were done correctly and the hypothesis was true, the control group of mice should have all died and the experimental group should have had a statistically significant number of survivors.

The results he actually got, instead, were that his control group all survived with the exception of one, which was not statistically different from the experimental group, which also survived with the exception of one.

This meant that the doctor had screwed up his experiment.

But the doctor was unwilling to admit defeat. Whether he was simply pathetically insistent upon fooling himself, or whether he just wanted badly to fool others, we do not know.

We do know what he did next, though, and that was to spin one hell of a whopper about what the experiment results meant. Instead of admitting that it was a failed experiment, the doctor pretended that it was actually a SUPER-SUCCESS where the control group got QUANTUM ENTANGLED with the experimental group and therefore the experimental results meant the doctor had proved energy healing to work on BOTH groups.

There were actually people gullible enough to swallow that load of bullcrap.

And one of them is Marg.

So, Marg, when you say that biochemical approaches to cancer haven’t given sufficient results and don’t show enough promise of further results to be where we should be concentrating our research, I say your opinions on the matter amount to birdcrap, because that’s what your ability to distinguish between real science and wishful thinking amounts to.

The numbers are cited are for individual cancers, not for cancers overall. @Denice, show me the studies that disprove those individual numbers. Show me where the authors of this study recanted.

Orac’s (and others’) objection to this study was that it excluded cancers such as leukemias where the results were more positive and therefore came up with an overall low percentage. Mind you the 5-year survival rate for AML is not so hot either, is it?

Marg, you turkey, you’re still pulling the same craphead manuevers! No one is saying the authors of the study have “recanted.” No one is saying that chemotherapy is a magic bullet that can alleviate every form of cancer.

What we are saying is that, contrary to your idiotic claim that “chemotherapy promotes the spread of cancer,” chemotherapy is one of the most successful anti-cancer methods we actually have, and while not every cancer can be successfully treated with it, many can. Oh, yes, we know that you think energy healing is a much better alternative, but that is because on the subject of energy healing you are a gullible chump who swallows nonsense that an intelligent seventh-grader would spot as a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys.

So no one is really interested in hearing you whine ungratefully (and lie) about how awful chemotherapy is. It’s the best we’ve got so far, and while we’d gladly drop it in a heartbeat for an alternative that gave better results and caused less hardship to those taking it, that alternative has to be REAL. Not your cockamamie energy healing crapola where you look at an experiment that clearly failed and claim it actually proved both energy healing AND non-locality.

if as much time, money and effort were spent on researching energy healing
Also, see my previous comment. Many ‘alternative therapies’ are big business in their own right – look at the supplements industry as an example – so how come they aren’t funding research to demonstrate their effectiveness? CAM proponents claim what they offer is effective, so over to them to support that claim with published, peer-reviewed data (none of those anonymised heart-warming stories, thank you).

Obviously your lot are not going to bother with scientific studies on the people who have been destroyed by chemo and sent home or to hospices to die.

I am still intrigued by this earlier claim that the medical establishment is simply not interested in patients for whom chemotherapy is ineffective. The Frau Doktorin does a lot of volunteer work at the local hospice, so I occasionally meet the non-existent researchers there (not to mention the dedicated medical & nursing staff). They are all generous-souled individuals who would probably not approve of me inviting Marg to die in a fire.

I see Marg is avoiding my questions. And not posting citations as requested instead of books…

No wonder the authors are questioning the validity of chemo.

Are they though? Can you cite their actual words where they do that?

If biochemical approaches worked, you would think that after 70-odd years we’d something better to show for all the money and effort sunk into this.

If rockets worked, you would think that after 70-odd years we’d have something better to show for all the money and effort sunk into space flight. And look: we’ve only been to the moon a couple of times!

(Erm, Alison said it better: homeopathy, energy healing, bloodletting, cupping, acupuncture… so many things have had plenty of time to show evidence. Heck, evolution has had the same amount of time as many of these and look how well it’s been supported by evidence!)

The numbers are cited are for individual cancers, not for cancers overall. @Denice, show me the studies that disprove those individual numbers. Show me where the authors of this study recanted.

You’re the one with the hypothesis. But of course, all you can do is point to *one* study that doesn’t say what you think it does, and where you insist that the authors mis-wrote their conclusions.

And why you won’t find anything about *recanting* is because the others don’t say what you think they do.

None of that changes the dismal numbers for chemotherapy.

Which you don’t seem to want to cite. Funny, I asked you to post some stats. Where are they?

If as much time, money and effort were spent on researching energy healing as has been wasted on the biochemical alternative, it would be doing a heck of a better job by now than chemotherapy does.

Ah yes, the “there’s no money to research alt-med” gambit. Yawn…

Where’s the stats Marg? How can I possibly change my mind if you refuse to post any real references?

If as much time, money and effort were spent on researching energy healing as has been wasted on the biochemical alternative, it would be doing a heck of a better job by now than chemotherapy does.

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride them.
(OT, English is my second language, and I never really understood this saying – still, I found it quite evocative)

Isn’t there a branch of the NIH, the NCCAM, with a annual budget of 125-million dollars, whose role is to investigate alternative medicine?
(sigh – that budget could be enough to finance annually about sixty 20-people, cancer-searching academic teams like my former lab)
I believe the only “alternate” protocol NCCAM managed to confirm after 20 years of inquiries is massage as pain relief.
Which, considering, is not that alternative. Nor that news.

I guess the searchers there (and the politicians behind the foundation of the institute) were not interested enough in challenging their conventional way of thinking.

@heliantus – in the legal world, if you want to be a litigator, you work for a a law firm, if you’re interested in reviewing contracts & having a 9 – 5 job, you go work for a corporate legal office…..I guess in Medicine, if you don’t want to stretch yourself, or are just looking for a paycheck, you go work for NCCAM – I mean, how hard can that research be, really? It isn’t like you have to worry about finding actual, “evidence” right?

The goal of trolling is to put less time & effort into provoking people you provoke than they spend responding to your provocations. Or so I hear from a friend.
So you can’t expect Marg to *read* the papers she waves at you; that would take time and effort, and miss the whole point of the game.

“As the 5-year relative survival rate for cancer in Australia is now over 60%, it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required. Morgan, G. et al. (2004). Clinical Oncology 16, 549e560″

So 1690 patients in the studies looked at owed their 5 year survival to chemotherapy? How many owed 1 year additional survival to chemotherapy I wonder? Even one of the examples they give of chemotherapy being oversold, in breast cancer, seems a lot better than nothing to me:

From our calculations, only 164 women (3.5%) actually had a survival benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy. In other words, on average, 29 women had to be treated for one additional woman to survive more than 5 years.

A ‘number needed to treat’ of 29 for 5 year survival doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Do you think it would have been better if these patients had died? If not, what exactly is your argument, because it isn’t at all clear to me. Also worth noting is that survival isn’t the only important factor in cancer. Quality of life is also important – again if you look at the Gonzalez trial, not only did the patients receiving chemotherapy live 3 times longer (though apparently according to Marg increasing survival by less than 5 years is pointless), they also had a much better quality of life than those treated using the Gonzalez protocol.

@Krebiozen
“Quality of life”? I’ve seen the quality of life chemo can give. Puking guts out, no energy, joint pain, kidney failure; in comparison having no hair is just a minor, cosmetic detail. In another thread a commenter said “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy”. And yes, I recognize that this is not everyone’s experience, but it should not be _anyone’s_.

Re: one additional year. How do you know that the people who lived one year lived that additional year because of chemo? They could have lived that year without chemo too.

More Oracian analysis : Does chemotherapy work or not? The “2%” gambit ( Sept 2011).

It appears to me that the ‘2%’ gambit is part of a programmed campaign by alt med to accomplish many goals, including:
frightening people about SBM treatments,
illustrating how ‘useless’ SBM treatments are,
painting the medical establish as cruel, greedy and disingenuous,
portraying themselves as those who will ‘enlighten’ and ‘save’ the general public heroically.

Orac discusses how the oft-quoted study doesn’t disentangle curative/ adjuvant chemotherapy and doesn’t include cancers that use chemotherapy successfully as a primary treatment; it doesn’t include other measures of outcome, I note. Orac notes another alt med PR gem: that doctors themselves ‘refuse’ chemotherapy- based on an old study. They neglect to tell you that a new study doesn’t show the same results.

However, if you take the word of woo-meisters, it would seem as if Gonzalez and Burzynski** offer a superior advantage to chemotherapy ( note: Dr B, despite his press, does use chemotherapy and *exclusively* so);
to those who carp about SBM’s so-called 2%:
what are alternative therapies’ effect? 30%? 70%?
Oddly, I don’t seem to recall seeing *their* numbers.

If you scan a so-called documentary about alt med cancer ‘cures’, read a book by Suzanne Somers, see articles or listen to rants by web woo-meisters, you will hear amorphous stories about ‘cures’ without any numbers or percentages included: one of the idiots I survey says “all” while simultaneously hinting that SBM produces NO cures.
This is similar to anti-vaccine propaganda wherein negatives are exaggerated and positive effects are omitted.

Sounds like a black-and-white paint job with a broad brush.
2%? Why not just say zero?

I’ve seen the quality of life chemo can give. Puking guts out, no energy, joint pain, kidney failure; in comparison having no hair is just a minor, cosmetic detail.

Not only are you stupid, but you’re a liar and behind the times. My mother just had chemo for breast cancer, and didn’t throw up once. She lost some — not all — of her hair, and only had one major incident at all, which was because she contracted a bladder infection. Another friend of mine who was also undergoing chemo at the same time didn’t throw up, didn’t lose much of her hair at all, and had no issues aside from some fatigue. I have fatigue and I’ve never had cancer or chemo.

Also, the study you just threw out claiming that it proves chemo doesn’t work is looking at adjuvant chemotherapy only, which is to say supplemental chemo that is secondary to the major treatment. It does have a higher treatment-to-benefit ratio than primary chemotherapy, but since you never know if you’re going to be that one person in 29, it’s still probably a good idea.

Also, to actually rebut your argument on the lack of merits, even assuming arguendo that there really was such a thing as vitalistic energy, you just said that energy healing doesn’t work as well as chemotherapy, so why in hell should we discard something that works in favour of a clunky prototype anyway?

We can all play teh anecdote game–I’ve also seen the quality of life chemotherapy did. Gave a friend an additional four years with his young children, one more wilderness trip with the college friends he’d been kayaking with every summer for 29 years, the time to wrap up his personal career to his own satisfaction, etc. Gave my mom nearly 6 more years with me and my family. Cured a cousin (testicular cancer).

Is chemotherapy a guaranteed cure for every type of cancer? Of course not. One can cherry pick specific cancers where it proves less likely to result in long time survival as the authors of the study you keep shoving in our faces did but it would be dishonest (either wilffully or through ignorance) to argue that therefore chemoptherapy is only effective in 2% of all cancer patients who receive it and therefore should be abandoned in favor of natural ‘therapies’ that have never been shown to be effective at all.

On April 16, 1996, Amalie Bigony died at Palmetto General Hospital, in Hialeah, Florida. As this story … told by Mrs. Bigony’s daughter, Vicky, makes clear, the cause of this South Florida woman’s death was chemotherapy, although physicians originally attempted to lay the blame on ovarian cancer. ..

‘In April 15th of 1996, my mother passed away-exactly 10 days after undergoing chemo-therapy. She had been told by her surgeon that she only needed six treatments. My mother died after just one.

Her doctor finally conceded that the chemotherapy killed her and the amended death certificate is so annotated. It was a shock to us all. Who would have thought one treatment of chemo could be fatal? That’s why I feel what happened to my mom should be made public.

Undergoing chemotherapy is not to be taken lightly. Even though many people are aware of the terrible side effects, such as nausea, weakness and loss of hair, how many really understand that the drugs used for chemotherapy are toxins, deadly poisons that kill all your cells, not just cancer? According to one doctor regarding my mother’s case, it is not uncommon for patients to die from chemotherapy. I wonder why people are not aware of this fact? We certainly were not, and even after the doctor conceded to us that the chemotherapy had killed my mother, he still tried to downplay what happened by saying, “The cancer was so advanced, your mother would not have lived long anyway.”

In late December 1995, my mother had a severe pain attack in her abdomen. A sonogram determined she had a mass on her right ovary. Follow-up tests confirmed it was cancerous. Her CA-125 count was at 400 [editor’s note: normal CA-125 levels are less than 35]. Due to some delay, surgery was not scheduled until March 6, 1996. A full hysterectomy was performed and the mass removed.

However, since the tumor was touching on four different areas, the surgeon insisted that my mother undergo chemotherapy. My mother was hesitant and asked about alternative treatment, but the surgeon said that was not anoption. He added that she needed to have only six treatments of chemotherapy.

On April 4 and 5, my mother underwent the chemotherapy. The drugs used were Taxol and Platinol. Three days later, on Monday, April 8, my mother fainted and was rushed to the emergency room. She was released, but on April 10 was again in the emergency room because of severe pain. No blood was drawn and after being given a shot of morphine, my mother was released and again sent home.

On Friday, April 12, my father and I took my mother in to see her physician. After a brief examination, she was, to my surprise, not hospitalized. I thought the doctor might hospitalize her or at least run more tests. In my mind, my mother was more than just weak; she could not walk and could hardly stand. We even had to borrow a wheelchair from the doctor’s office for her to use. However, our not being doctors and never having been around anyone who had to undergo chemotherapy, my father and I had to trust the doctor’s decision. We took my mother home.

Two days later, on Sunday, April 14, my Mother was again rushed to the emergency room-one final time. She was barely conscious. At first the doctor thought she was having a reaction to the drug Darvon, which my mother was taking for pain.

However, when the blood work came back, the doctor explained to me that my mother had no more white blood cells [editor’s note: a common and sometimes lethal side effect of chemotherapy is white blood-cell depletion], and her prognosis was poor.

The next 24 hours were a nightmare, with one crisis after another. First, my mother had to be intubated [the insertion of a tracheal tube] because she was having problems breathing. When she was finally stable enough to be transferred to the critical care unit, her heart rate had shot up to 180. It took four hours for a cardiologist to finally come. Later, my mother ran a high fever.

Her own doctor and oncologist never came until the following Monday morning, but my dad and I stayed and never left my mother’s side, holding her hand and talking to her. During this entire time, my dad and I had no idea how critical my mother’s condition was or what was causing her heart rate and temperature to soar. Unbeknownst to us, my mother’s kidneys had also begun to fail. Even though the cardiologist had mentioned the term “septicshock” [shock associated with overwhelming infection], I was unable at the time to fully comprehend what it meant.

At 8 a.m. Monday morning, my Mother’s doctor and oncologist finally came. But by then, there was not much they could do and so had to call in a heart specialist as well as an expert on infectious diseases. A procedure was attempted whereby a tube was inserted into the lungs with the hope of draining fluid which had accumulated. However, not long thereafter my mother’s heart stopped beating altogether.

Quite simply, my mother died from septic shock brought on by chemotherapy. The chemotherapy had wiped out her white blood cell count, leaving her at risk for infection. This led to the release of endotoxins [fever-producing agents of bacterial origin causing her blood pressure to drop]. Without receiving the necessary oxygen to survive, her organs then began to fail. Yet all along, her heart was desperately trying to pump harder until it, too, failed.

I know if my mother had known how lethal chemotherapy is, she never would have consented to treatment. I hope what happened to my mother is enough to stop others from choosing chemotherapy.

I will never forget my mother’s words as she got weaker and weaker: “No more chemo.” My dad and I did not know at the time how true her words would be.’

That’s a rather succinct and accurate description of Alt-med grievances, yes.

Cue Marg’s last painting job, quoting four headlines which look like the same press article just copy/pasted from one news organism to the next. News tend to be propagated this way, you know.
The last headlines are more on topic, but that we wanted was peer-review articles. Press releases are not the same thing, the data is missing or incomplete.
But your argument from popularity is noted.

Clearly your lot have a lot of people to educate out there

Actually, as a matter of fact, you are right. Part of the scientists’ job should be to educate the public on their findings, and we could do a better job.
As the saying goes, knowing is half the battle.

@JGC
You are really not looking at the numbers, are you? Orac disputes the overall 2% finding. I am conceding to him on the charge that authors left out blood cancers where chemo is the primary method of treatment, but that still leaves the numbers for the individual cancers, which with the exception of one or two are dismal.

The study was not done by so-called “woo-meisters” but by medical professionals. It was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Here are comments from some other scientists/medical professionals:

…as a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.
Alan C Nixon, PhD, former president of the American Chemical Society

Cancer researchers, medical journals, and the popular media all have contributed to a situation in which many people with common malignancies are being treated with drugs not known to be effective.
Dr. Martin Shapiro UCLA

Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade, yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors.
Allen Levin, MD, UCSF, The Healing of Cancer

…chemo drugs are some of the most toxic substances ever designed to go into a human body, their effects are very serious, and are often the direct cause of death. Like the case of Jackie Onassis, who underwent chemo for one of the rare diseases in which it generally has some beneficial results: non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She went into the hospital on Friday and was dead by Tuesday.
Dr Tim O’Shea in TO THE CANCER PATIENT

Seems there are doctors out there who don’t buy into chemo. Convince them first, then try to convince me.

Treatment is usually given at intervals, so that the body is not overwhelmed by its toxicity.

But that allows time for tumour cells to recover and develop resistance.

In this study, by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at fibroblast cells, which normally play a critical role in wound healing and the production of collagen, the main component of connective tissue such as tendons.

But chemotherapy causes DNA damage that causes the fibroblasts to produce up to 30 times more of a protein called WNT16B than they should.

how many really understand that the drugs used for chemotherapy are toxins, deadly poisons that kill all your cells, not just cancer?

One problem with cancer, you see, is that cancer cells are your cells, too.
So yeah, targeting the rogue cells and leaving the normal cells alone is sort of tricky.
And this will likely be the case with any alternative treatment you may think of (alternative as “other than mainstream chemo”).
Unless you have something specific of cancer cells to target. We are getting here, slowly, for some cancers, with more or less success.

Regardless of where it comes from, the woman died, and her doctors conceded that it was from her chemotherapy.

Um, no, this has not been demonstrated in the slightest. The underlying assertion is that a single administration of paclitaxel destroyed, in toto, Ms. Bigony’s leukocytes, which were just dandy otherwise. This is the part where you provide some actual documentation.

he still tried to downplay what happened by saying, “The cancer was so advanced, your mother would not have lived long anyway.”

Cold comfort, but that’s likely true.
A number of cancers are benign and trying to treat them is doing more harm than good. There are constant re-evaluations of the consensus for treatment for prostate tumors, by example. Colon tumors are another example.
On the other hand, a number of cancers are known to be quickly fatal. Pancreatic cancer (see Steve Jobs) is one of them. Ovarian cancer isn’t far down on the list, IIRC.

I concur with Narad, “This is the part where you provide some actual documentation.” I don’t reject the idea that this woman had her life shortened because of the chemo.
But.
For a proper risk/benefit assessment, one need to know the chance of the risk, and the chance of the benefit.
[Citation needed], please.

My cut-and-paste sentence was referring to the way News media are propagating information, by picking up that has been published by the concurrent and re-publishing it.
Or more simply: next time you point us to a news article, just pick one, no need to give four or five versions of the same.

But that allows time for tumour cells to recover and develop resistance.

Yes, this is a problem, a serious one, and not a new one. We have something similar going on with antibiotics, and to some extend with herbicides.
A few scientific teams are trying to find solutions, be it new molecules, or different protocols. Not enough teams, in my opinion, but I could be biased.

you can see how it would lead people to believe that chemotherapy leads to a worsening of cancer:

I agree that having a cancer resistant to chemo is worse than having a cancer which is not, but I’m not sure I agree with the implication that chemo should be dropped altogether.
When a soldier run out of ammo to shot at the enemy, the situation is worsening for him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he shouldn’t have fired in the first place.

Believe me, if there was something better than chemo, all of us here would love to hear about it.
Or just that a treatment is ineffective? Again, do tell.
But as pointed elsewhere, we are picky: we need data to convince us that we are not running after shadows.

Adverse events are all around if you just care to open your eyes and look.

Sigh. Everything you do has potential adverse events. Even breathing air or drinking water
(to start with, there are all the dust micro-particles you draw in, which do some damage to your lungs or guts; let’s add allergens and the occasional pathogen micro-organism for more serious adverse events)

If something has biological effects, then part of the effects are likely to be undesired, or even undesirable. Salicylic acid (a natural molecule which lead to aspirin) is an egregious example of this – it’s a painkiller, an antipyretic, an anticoagulant, and it has a tendency to trigger stomach ulcers. Not everybody need all of these effects, especially the ulcer part.

The question, again, is risk/benefit. How often does that adverse event happen? How often, by comparison, the patient is getting better for taking the medicine?

We agree that as Orac has indicated the authors failed to include outcomes for the cancers where chemotherapy has been found most efficacious during their analysis. Do you also agree that Orac’s other points (the author’s failure to distinguish between adjuvant and curative chemotherapeutic regimens or to consider other measures of outcome other than survival time (e.g., quality of life) are correct as well, and as a result a blanket statement that chemotherapy is only successful 2.1% of the time isn’t supported by this study?

…but that still leaves the numbers for the individual cancers, which with the exception of one or two are dismal.

Yes, for the particular set of ‘individual’ (I.e. cherry-picked )cancers presented chemotherapy does not perform as well as we’d all wish it would.:clearly, however, it still performs better than no chemotherapy at all.

as a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.

…a situation in which many people with common malignancies are being treated with drugs not known to be effective.

Which common malignancies, what drugs, and what evidence demonstrating they are ineffective is Dr. Shapiro referring to here? Again: be specific.

Are you seeing the trend here? Yes, there are “doctors out there who don’t buy into chemo”, but unless they can provide credible evidence that they’re correct not to buy into chemo all these cut and pastes represent is an argument from authority at best, and an argument vox populi at worst.

Show us evidence, rather than cut and paste random quotes, if you want anyone to take your position seriously.

Perhaps their lives were extended by 4 years? If you include cancers that have a very short average survival and use 5 year survival to assess treatment efficacy, you will get a very distorted picture. For some cancers conventional treatment is not very effective, it’s true. My reaction is to hope that current and future research will find better treatments for the many thousands of different types of cancer that have proved to be more complex and difficult to treat than anyone expected 40 years ago, and to make a donation to a cancer charity. You appear to assume that this (relative) failure is because scientists are too stupid and have been trying all the wrong approaches, when in many cases those approaches have been tried and are utterly useless. Your attitude seems to me to be hopelessly naive and more than a little offensive to the thousands of doctors and scientists who have devoted their working lives to solving this conundrum.

Did anyone notice, in Marg’s lovely story about her friends with breast cancer, that she carefully worded that they refused chemotherapy and radiation therapy and then went on about they did dietary changes, etc. Wonder if they happened to have the curative SURGERY which is the primary treatment for breast cancer? (Gee, Marg, given what our host does for a living, you think we don’t know a fair amount about how breast cancer is treated from his many posts?) After all, I’m sure Marg is well aware that surgery (lumpectomy preferably, greater surgery if the mass is too large or there is lymph node involvement) is the treatment of choice, and chemo/radiation are additional therapies used to improve long term outcomes?

After all, WAY back in the day, many, many, many women lived long lives after radical mastectomies with no radiation or chemotherapy. Nowadays, we’ve improved things so women don’t necessarily have to lose their entire breast, but they improve their changes to some extent with chemo/radiation.

So, Marg – want to tell us the rest of the story of your friends? Surgery or not?

Another facet of black-and-white thinking.. scratch that! there AREN’T any facets in black-and-white thinking!
Another *characteristic* of B&W thinking is that you don’t weigh benefits and risks- it’s all one way or the other – not gradations.

We know that young children think this way and GRADUALLY start to incorporate a more subtle recognition of shades of difference rather than just 2 categories- a dichotomy ( yes/no). By adolescence, most kids start to think this way, e.g. they can rate things on a scale and using percentiles gets easier for them. Also their verbal characterisations get more complex as they use qualifiers and exceptions more. Kids learn to consider more than one variable simultaneously and their interactions as well AND this is not purely in the cognitive realm ( school work, naive physics et al) but includes social cognition. They are less swayed by emotional arguments and learn to understand hidden motives of persauders.

For some unearthy reason that I cannot fathom**, alt med seems to habitually use less complex explanations when discussing science with its audience.

No, we firmly differentiate CAM/ woo/ alt med that does NO harm from that which DOES harm as well as the degree/ amount of harm that is done. Additionally, we discriminate ‘harm’ that merely wastes time, money or both from that which causes physical harm. Or psychological harm. We also discern that alt med providers might be motivated by monetary rewards or may honestly and TRULY believe in their woo.
I could go on but won’t.

With the use of chemotherapy we must then differentiate between the temporary harm that causes the patient to feel ill while under treatment and the lasting harm which causes the cancer to come back stronger than ever, or results in “adverse treatment effects” leading to death.

No kidding! Who ever said corporations have pure motives? Why do you think there is regulation? Should be more.
Or that SBM isn’t concerned with multiple side-effects along a spectrum of harm or that there isn’t a trade-off between gain and loss with any treatment? What do you think testing and trials are about?

@Denice
Okay, that bit about guinea pigs was facetious on my part. I take it back. I understand that everyone means well, maybe even the pharmaceutical companies, whose main interest is the bottom line and for whom a long protracted illness needing lots of treatment is a financial bonanza. No one really wants to see cancer patients suffer, not you, not me, not Orac, or anyone on this discussion board. And I have as much contempt as you do for alternative practitioners who are out to fleece cancer patients. In the best of all possible worlds orthodox medicine and CAM should work together for the best outcome and least suffering for the patient. I hope we can agree on that.

I have as much contempt as you do for alternative practitioners who are out to fleece cancer patients

The problem here is that you are unable to recognize when patients are being fleeced. Remember that time you wrote this?

[…]reiki hasn’t been repeatedly and emphatically demonstrated to be utterly false. It has been demonstrated to speed up wound healing, and to improve surgical outcomes and anxiety in hospitalized patients. Pranic healing, another form of energy healing, has been demonstrated to protect cell lines against gamma radiation.

CAM practitioners fleece people, including cancer patients, every day. The only way ‘orthodox medicine’ and CAM can truly “work together” is if CAM disappears.

Marg would not ask such stupid questions if only she would read the sources she cites. Nothing happened to them, because these are extrapolations from applying results from RCTs and historic cancer incidences to the Australian population at a particular moment — not empirical counts.

Some would have lived, some would have died. The 1690 is the hypothetical number of people who would have died before 5 years if they had been treated without chemotherapy, and would have passed the 5-year point *with* chemotherapy. The numbers who would have died before 5 years despite receiving chemotherapy or who would have lived at least 5 years without chemo are *not calculated* in the paper (not being the authors’ concern).

Even one of the examples they give of chemotherapy being oversold, in breast cancer, seems a lot better than nothing to me:
As has been noted, a lot of women who undergo surgery for breast cancer without adjuvant chemo or radiotherapy relapse after more than 5 years. The 5-year criterion was chosen to minimise the benefit of adjuvant treatment.

Marg, the conclusion that you want us to accept is “energy healing is better than chemotherapy.” And the premise you keep spewing at us is “Chemotherapy is awful.” Let’s diagram that syllogism, shall we?

Do you see what I see? I see a missing premise! I see a big empty space where there needs to be some sort of evidence for energy healing being better than chemotherapy!

By “evidence,” BTW, we mean something better than unsupported assertion of counterfactuals, like:

If as much time, money and effort were spent on researching energy healing as has been wasted on the biochemical alternative, it would be doing a heck of a better job by now than chemotherapy does.

I see by this that we have something in common: I, too, enjoyed a few episodes of Sliders back in the day, at least in the early seasons. But you have to realize, Marg, all those things they showed of “Here’s what would have resulted in some alternate world where things happened differently than they did in ours!” were just make-believe. They were made up by TV writers, Marg. Trying to use them as evidence to win real-world arguments is just embarrassingly silly.

It’s ok, all of this talk of measuring effectiveness is totally pointless according to Marg. On the last thread she said
It’s really quite simple. When you treat a person, there are two possibilities: there is either an effect or there isn’t one. In my empirical experience there is an effect most of the time. I don’t need studies to prove to me that what I do is effective; people tell me whether it’s effective or not.

Marg, why does chemotherapy require studies of effectiveness but reiki doesn’t?
Could oncologists just say, “In my empirical experience there is an effect most of the time” like you did with reiki?
Why the double standard?

@Antaeus Feldspar
That argument is the best one anyone has produced so far. I agree. There is a big blank. We will have to work on filling that big blank.

@AdamG
If I were a cancer patient I would be far more reassured by an oncologist saying “in my empirical experience there is a [positive] effect most of the time” than I would be by “studies show”, but that’s just me.

The problem with experimental data from the perspective of the consumer is that because something works on X per cent of the participants in a study is no guarantee that it will work on you. In fact, it is not even a guarantee that it will work on the same per cent of the population, when it’s taken out of the lab into the general population or that there will not be unexpected side effects or “adverse events” (see Vioxx). It’s a game of chance that is dressed up in scientific garb and therefore people naively buy into it.

I have not stated that experimental data is de rigueur to prove the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

So, a number of practitioners speaking to its efficacy is all it takes for a treatment to be effective? How, then, do you propose we identify alternative practitioners who are ‘fleecing cancer patients’ as you suggest above? Surely those who are fleecing patients also claim that their treatments are effective. What system can we use to determine whether or not their claims are truthful?

@AdamG
It’s a problem, isn’t it? When the world was a much smaller place, you could rely upon patient testimonials. If a healer consistently failed, everyone in the community would know. With healthcare delivered in a mass market, this no longer works. Whether you go to a healer or an oncologist, you have no clue what kind of track record they have. And, BTW, even with the best studies on hand, you as a patient have no idea what kind of results your oncologist or the cancer centre you are going to have had with your kind of cancer. None. It’s all accepted on faith. Unless I am missing some kind of database that keeps these records. Is there one? Also, does anyone keep tabs on oncologists? If there were one out there that consistently and catastrophically underperformed, or just had the signal bad luck of losing a lot of patients, would other oncologists ring the alarm bell? Would anyone warn patients? Are there checks and balances? I am just asking the question because I don’t know the answer. The same is true of healers.

With any therapy, we have no way of knowing how effective it will be *without* research and yes, research is not infallible. A patient only can be assured that on *average* a person will be helped- not any one individual. But that’s science. It’s about probabilities and liklihoods. And SBM strives to acquire more information that guides doctors better in matching patient and therapy.

And research can be tainted and experimenters can CHEAT( and get found out, I should add). And competing researchers can often improve methods. SBM thus is a self-correcting system, altho’ it may take a long time..

Alt med does NOT usually present scrupulous methodologies and serious peer review. Statistical analyses are often an afterthought. Testimonies may be relied upon to convince potential patients sans data. Theoretical considerations may be articles of faith rather than testable hypotheses.’ they just KNOW it will work.

Here is my greatest concern about alt med: many of those who proselytise also have vested interests because they sell products like supplements, treatments or information ( books, lectures, videos) AND they do not have the blind justice of methodology, statistics, review and regulation to ferret this out.They don’t rely upon the scientific method even though they present themselves as scientists. It’s harder to spot a cheat if they don’t submit themselves to the public scrunity and criticism of submitting articles to journals.

And -btw- two of the biggest frauds in medicine/ psychology were found out by the press, although their work caused suspicion by people in their own fields first.

That argument is the best one anyone has produced so far. I agree. There is a big blank. We will have to work on filling that big blank.

No, Marg. You have to work on filling that big blank. Because you’re the only one who is insistent on the particular goal that blank is en route to. The rest of us are all “we want whatever works best against cancer to be used against cancer” and you’re the only one who’s all “Energy healing, ooh, ooh, it’s the new paradigm, let’s ditch that nasty chemotherapy which only has real-world results in its favor.”

@Antaeus
By “we” I meant my lot, not your lot. Because we are not scientists, our opportunities for creating scientific studies are limited. Most studies on energy healing tend to be of the “adjunctive pain and anxiety relief” variety. We don’t often get mice to play with. Apparently IRCs believe that subjecting mice to energy healing is causing them unnecessary suffering. So it’s hard even to get a foot in the door.

BTW wouldn’t you love to ditch that nasty chemotherapy and have something better?

@Denice
Curious to know, who were the two frauds unmasked by the media?

I know about an incompetent pathologist who often acted as expert witness in child death cases and sent many innocent parents to jail. I also know about an ob/gyn who crippled women through shockingly incompetent surgeries for decades before his license to practice medicine was finally revoked. He just kept moving jurisdictions every time questions were raised.

When the world was a much smaller place, you could rely upon patient testimonials. If a healer consistently failed, everyone in the community would know.

Marg, I suggest you do a little research on Benjamin Rush, Founding Father of the USA, a great man, a medical pioneer, yet he was convinced that bloodletting was a cure-all. He even sued, successfully, a journalist who suggested he was leaving a trail of corpses in his wake, which we now know was almost certainly true. If a man like Rush could deceive himself so thoroughly, what chance do the rest of us mere mortals stand, without the scientific method and randomized clinical trials?

One has been a topic often @ RI: Andrew Wakefield fixed data and was exposed by Brian Deer of the Sunday TImes.

Another was Sir Cyril Burt whose research into intelligence and heredity was widely accepted. It was suspected that he created data – perhaps subjects and assistants as well. Also made public by the Sunday TImes. Psychologists were suspicious because of other data that contradicted his and because his coefficients of correlation were remarkably stable across studies- to 3 places, IIRC. This is not very likely to occur by chance.

On a personal note: my prof used to speak at length about how Burt’s dishonesty affected school/ social policy for decades: if science shows IQ is firmly based in heredity why spend money trying to educate kids?

I’ve always speculated if perhaps Wakefield, who is around my age, heard similar tales from a prof and instead of being upset by it, used it as a jumping off point for his own fraud. He didn’t have things line up quite so neatly as did Burt…he did Sir Cyril one better..or so he thought.
I always thought that Wakefield’s work didn’t fit other research I knew about.

@Jergen
In the long run, we are all dead. In the meantime I wish you all the best with your treatment, sincerely. I think the one conclusion we all agreed with is that results are individual. May you live a long life.

If I were a cancer patient I would be far more reassured by an oncologist saying “in my empirical experience there is a [positive] effect most of the time” than I would be by “studies show”, but that’s just me.

Where’s the rest of it go? Here’s the whole thing, I hope:
Marg @ 6:17 pm

If I were a cancer patient I would be far more reassured by an oncologist saying “in my empirical experience there is a [positive] effect most of the time” than I would be by “studies show”, but that’s just me.

“Studies show” is shorthand for “the empirical experience of a large number of practitioners and patients, adjusted for various sources of misleading experiences, such as the personalities and dreams of the practitioners, shows.”
Marg 7:09 pm

When the world was a much smaller place, you could only {FTFY} rely upon patient testimonials. If a healer consistently failed, everyone in the community would know. With healthcare delivered in a mass market, this no longer works. Whether you go to a healer or an oncologist, you have no clue what kind of track record they have. And, BTW, even with the best studies on hand, you as a patient have no idea what kind of results your oncologist or the cancer centre you are going to have had with your kind of cancer.

“And … even with the best [reputation] on hand, you as a patient have no idea what kind of results your ]woo-peddler is] going to have had with your kind of cancer.” FTFY.
———————————————————————————————
A few weeks ago, Daughter-in-law was diagnosed with GBM (Glioblastoma Multiforme). We immediately hit the various (medical) resources, on the web and in real life. Her hospital team in Seattle recommended radiation + adjuvant chemo, following the little bit of surgery that had been possible: web medical sources report this as the treatment most likely to be effective.
She has a family option of going to Scripps Hospital in San Diego (her sister works there). Sister checked with the Scripps center, who reported that Seattle had a good reputation. at least as good as their own, for GBM. The current plan is for her (and Granddaughter and Greatgrandkids) to return to San Diego after the Seattle treatment completes, next week or so.
———————————————————————————————
Info not relevant to Marg’s misguided blather:
Son was too far down the kidney list when dialysis proved insufficient, ten years ago, so DIL has been going it more-or-less alone.
The bad news: DIL’s platelet count took a nose dive over the weekend, so the Seattle team has DCed the chemo. They may treat her to a platelet infusion this week, depending on her condition. She may be going home to San Diego to recover, or to die. That’s the way life works. At least she will have given it her best shot, without falling prey to Marg-style fraud.

@Bill Price
I wish your daughter-in-law well and I am very sorry to hear about your son. Most alternative practitioners, like orthodox practitioners wish to help and your daughter-in-law (and you yourself), would probably benefit from something like reiki. I understand that you are angry, but it helps no one for you to vent on me.

In the best of all possible worlds orthodox medicine and CAM should work together for the best outcome and least suffering for the patient.

No.
In the best of all possible worlds, there is medicine which has been proved to work and is proposed to patient with appropriate explanation of risks and benefits, and there is medicine which hasn’t been proved efficient, and which is not proposed to the patient.

Again and again and again, it’s not about black and white orthodox vs CAM. It’s about data.
We don’t accept CAM because the data shows us it’s not working.

Forgive me: haven’t read the comments just yet, but I just saw this in my twitter feed…
An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism
nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=general&src=me

I share your desire for better options. My wife’s ovarian cancer was too far advanced for surgery at diagnosis so chemo was her only option. Unfortunately first and second line chemo failed and her tumours just laughed at the clinical trial agents she tried at the end. If there were another option with a better chance of working then I’d have urged her to try it. I’d have screamed for it. We moved 4000km for a clinical trial that looked promising and would have done whatever we could to find the right treatment..

Unfortunately there isn’t a better option.

Lots of interesting ideas: cell therapies, novel agents, combination therapies and better methods of detection (get it early enough and the stuff we have now works) but the data isn’t in yet to demonstrate efficacy… or side effects.

There are also lots of ideas for treatments that don’t work. That have been tried and failed. That’s where a lot of the CAM options fall. My wife’s oncologists were willing to let her stop treatment and try something alternative while they continued to monitor her blood work and the scheduled scans, but when we asked them for hard numbers, for outcomes, they were only able to say that there were no published data showing that the vitamin, energy and related treatments worked; that there was some data showing they didn’t work; and that they had never seen a single patient improved by the CAM in any measurable way.

Life doesn’t always work out how we’d like. The magic options isn’t there just because we think it should be. That doesn’t mean we stop looking, but we don’t have the luxury of fooling ourselves.

@Niche Geek
You are right about life not always working out the way we`d want it to. And also about keeping on looking while not fooling oneself. That`s a difficult balance to keep. I also wish medical practitioners were more abreast of what`s available out there.

@Niche Geek
There are new energy therapies out there that are more effective than reiki, for instance. The studies on energy therapies have mostly concentrated on reiki and therapeutic touch, and mostly with regard to pain and anxiety relief. They are usually initiated by nurses, many of whom have some background in reiki or TT. The only person I know of who studied the effectiveness of an energy therapy on cancer was Bill Bengston, who Orac & everyone else here love to scoff at because all the mice in his experiments survived to full life span cures, including most of the controls. The catch is that he has done about a dozen experiments in at least five institutions (including medical schools), with at least two different cancers, and the pesky mice persist in surviving no matter what is done to them, even after growing massive tumors. He has not done trials with people yet.

Also, Leigh Fortson`s book “Embrace, Release, Heal“, which came out last year, is quite a resource. She has collected the stories of a dozen cancer survivors, including herself, who beat the odds with alternative medicine after conventional treatment failed. But at this point reading it may just serve to add to the pain of your loss, so you may not want to. The evidence all tends to be anecdotal rather than experimental anyway.

Forgive me if you’ve heard this before, but you are applying an appalling double standard. Every single chemotherapy worked brilliantly in mice. Every single chemotherapy looked great anectdotally. Nobody would have tried a further trial if it hadn’t. Why should I believe your anecdotes over theirs?

As for Reiki, she actually tried it as an adjuvant. It was definitely restful and calming but clearly had no effect on any objective tests. Based upon that experience, I have no problem with Reiki as a meditative tool. In that way it is comparable to a lot of religious practices… but that doesn’t make it medicine.

@Bill Price
I wish your daughter-in-law well and I am very sorry to hear about your son. Most alternative practitioners, like orthodox practitioners wish to help

Thank you for your good wishes and sorrow. The issue I have with “alternative practitioners” and their putative “wish to help” is the simple truth that what they practice destroys life, while pretending to ‘help’. Life is all we’ve got, and death is part of it. The best we can do is to make the best of what we get – both in quantity and quality. The game of the “alternative practitioner” is to promise both, but to deliver, at most, a brief improvement in perceived quality, often at the expense of quantity.

and your daughter-in-law (and you yourself), would probably benefit from something like reiki.

Well, I’ve found that relaxation and massage can give me a brief improvement in my mental state, and DIL has likely had that experience also. No reiki practitioner is needed for that.

I understand that you are angry, but it helps no one for you to vent on me.

Like theists insists that atheists are angry at the theists’ gods, CAM believers seem to believe that real-med users are angry at CAM. The believer must adopt the attitude that, since the believer has THE TRUTH™, any dissent must be from anger. The believer also tends to project: the believer is angry because THE TRUTH™ is not immediately, unquestioningly accepted, so the ‘angry’ dissenter-from-TRUTH™ must likewise be angry.
No, Marg, I’m not angry; I’m sometimes sad however. I’m sad about the likelihood that DIL will not survive much longer, and that we, her kids and her grandkids will not have her in their lives. I’m happy, though, that none of the family has suggested substituting woo-fraud for actual medicine. I’m sad, a bit, that the chemo hasn’t been as effective an adjuvant as it often is; but I’m happy for what effect it has had.
When I speak of reiki and the other forms of woo-fraud as woo-fraud, I’m not venting any anger. To the extent that you identify your woo-fraud as part of yourself, I can see how you might think I’m venting on you. I’m just honestly and accurately characterising them. No, Marg, it’s not about you — it’s about reality.

If Bengston has done about a dozen different experiments in five institutions with two different cancers and each time the result has been that the control group survives at a rate indistinguishable from that of the experimental group, the conclusion it points to is that he needs to learn how to stop f***ing up his experiments.

It would take a truly committed idiot to look at Bengston providing these results and say “Wow, there was no difference between the control group and the experimental group; that proves that energy healing makes a big difference.” Unfortunately, Marg has affirmed over and over that she fits that bill.

@Bill Price
No one suggests using reiki as a stand-alone therapy for cancer. I don`t know where you would get the idea that it would improve quailty of life _at the expense of quantity_, but I am pretty sure that if it did that, hospitals would not be offering it as an option. I am also pretty sure that the reiki practitioners who volunteer their time in hospitals are not fleecing patients. Why would you want to take pride in your DIL not availing herself of an option that might make her feel better while she undergoes orthodox medical treatment? It is very different from massage.

@Niche Geek
As above, I don`t advocate reiki as a stand-alone medical therapy. I advocate it precisely for the reasons you suggest: it makes people feel better. Calm and peaceful are valuable states to be able to have in the midst cancer treatment.

Reiki or other energy “healing” most certainly can have a calming effect and help with pain and stress. So can the prayer that any church will teach you for free. So can watching sitcoms on television.. So can watching a baby sleep.
My problem is when energy”healers” claim to be able to cure cancer. Then they are just stealing peoples’ money and giving them ephemeral useless twinkles of hope. True hope that a real treatment will work is beyond price but the false hope these people sell is pitiable.
I have lasting side effects from chemo but compared to the agony of a fungating breast tumor they are so small as to not be mentioned.

There are new energy therapies out there that are more effective than reiki, for instance.

I’ll bite: what are these new energy therapies, and how exactly have then been shown to be effective at all, let more effective than other reiki or other previous energy therapies?
Be as specific as possible.

Re: Bengston, quite simply when your control group fails and treatment outcomes are indistinguishable from untreatment outcomes (i.e., in B’s case, when both the treated and the untreated mice survive with equivalent frequencey) your entire experiment has failed and you cannot derive any meaningful conclusions regarding the efficacy of the treatment you’ve given the experiental groups, it doesn’t matter if the treatment we’re talking about is science based or CAM.

If I ciyed a study which found cancer patients treated with surgery followed by adjuvant chemo did no better than a control group of cancer patients who were left completely untreated, and said “See? This shows surgery and chemo works!” wouldn’t you jump all over me?

I can only remark that we have had centuries to show the efficacy of various alt med treatments: herbs, healing, meditation, prayer and decades for the more modern forms like vitamins and special diets. There should be a mountain of data. There isn’t. I read about the same herbs, supplements and methods in 1950s alt med articles or a 1990s healing digest ( I have a collection).

And whilst SBM *may* only provide what’s been shown to have effectiveness probablistically: it’s all we have. There is no certainty – but I’ll take the latter over no data at all. You can’t just rely upon word of mouth.

Someone in my family had a serious heart problem after the age of 80: he was managed by a simple pill 3 times a day and a simple 24 hour patch for almost 10 years. Needless to say, I was admonished by a few people to try herbs or supplements, even prayer over “dangerous pharmaceuticals”. Brew up the daily hawthorn/ foxglove! And pray? Not at all. He certainly wouldn’t buy into that. Nor would I. And I said so in no uncertain terms.

Alt med that works ( and is shown to work) becomes ‘medicine’. What works gets replicated. There are additional modalities that may make a person *feel* better without treating them, like massage and meditation. I view these as an extension of spa services. The problem comes in when alt med providers try to impute medicinal properties to them.

Reiki is only one energy therapy. Energy therapy and reiki are not interchangeable terms and more than color and red are. You cannot speak about the peace and calm reiki can create and compare it to other things, such as watching TV, unless you have experienced it. If you dismissing it without experience, all you are doing is expressing a prejudice.

My reason for giving Bengston the benefit of the doubt is that his only involvement with the mice was putting his hand around the cages. He didn`t inject them with cancer; he did not feed them; he did not touch them. Lab technicians did all of that. The experiments took place in multiple labs over several years. I just can`t wrap my head around the astronomical improbability that qualified lab technicians at several universities are all so incompetent that they can`t properly inject mice with cancer. Also, the cancer took. The mice grew the expected tumors. Histological analysis, not done by Bengston but by biologists, showed they were cancerous.Then the tumors ulcerated and healed. Something did that. Bengston relates that he did two experiments at most institutions; the second one because the people who ran the lab refused to believe the results of the first. Is it easier to believe that all these people screwed up, even when they were trying to prove him wrong, than it is to believe that there was some kind of effect?

I would like to see Bengston duplicate his results with people. That would be more meaningful.

I haven’t seen any evidence that Marg takes Bengston’s claims seriously except as a way to wind up RI readers. She hasn’t read his papers (or she wouldn’t be claiming that he’s done “about a dozen experiments”).

Here is a guy who is curing cancer in mice in experiment after experiment done at different university labs including two medical schools. He cures induced breast cancer and some kind of sarcoma.

reiki hasn’t been repeatedly and emphatically demonstrated to be utterly false. It has been demonstrated to speed up wound healing, and to improve surgical outcomes and anxiety in hospitalized patients. Pranic healing, another form of energy healing, has been demonstrated to protect cell lines against gamma radiation.

Marg has a deep failure to understand not only how scientific inquiry is conducted, but also why scientific inquiry is the only effective method for evaluating medical claims. We’re not going to get anywhere with Marg.

Marg: ”Leigh Fortson`s book “Embrace, Release, Heal“, which came out last year, is quite a resource. She has collected the stories of a dozen cancer survivors, including herself, who beat the odds with alternative medicine after conventional treatment failed”

And there we have it, really. ALL those cancer survivors had had conventional cancer treatment. Suzanne Somers-style, they have chosen to credit whatever ‘alternative medicine’ they also took.

I’ve read scores – perhaps hundreds – of ‘I healed my own cancer’ stories. I’ve never seen one that stood up to the mildest scrutiny. Without exception the person has either had conventional treatment too, OR was never actually diagnosed with cancer in the first place (many of the latter had self-diagnosed, some were flat out lying).

And believe me, I wanted to see reliable testimonials. I’ve ‘fessed up on RI before to being a reformed altie. It took my own cancer to shake me out of that. Books, websites, email exchanges… all the ‘healed myself’ testimonials I read led me to one conclusion – no alternative treatment had ever been effective against a single case of cancer. Anywhere. Ever.

The person who argued most persuasively had refused chemo and radiotherapy for her breast cancer, and was adamant that Gerson therapy had saved her life. But… before undertaking that gruelling regime, she had had surgery.

Me? Stage 3 breast cancer; surgery, chemo, radiotherapy. Fit and well almost 9 years after diagnosis.

Oh, that reminds me.

‘Most cancer patients in this country [which country, btw?] die of chemotherapy.’

Due to computer issues I haven’t been able to check in to the updates to this thread – I am here and I will be catching up, but it will take me a while.

I do see Marg has posted some citations – or at least one, and remember I haven’t read anything but the couple of posts after my most recent one – but I don’t see anything as yet that shows a study or list of statistics of the percentage of people who have cancer but the majority are dying/getting worse/not getting better when using chemo.

I’m not sure why you asked “I missed the comment that said all energy “healing” was reiki. Could someone point it out to me?” but I don’t believe I’ve seen it. I commented on Reiki because my wife tried it.

So not all energy healing is reiki. Yay. We have successfully adjusted the position of at least one Titanic deck chair. What an achievement.

Now that we’ve wasted more time on that than it deserves… Marg, when the hell are you going to show us some evidence – not speculation, not baseless assertion, but evidence – that energy healing OR reiki, whichever you choose, has a greater effect on cancer survival rates than chemotherapy? Oh, the answer is “never”? Then who the hell cares what the failed woo is called?

My information about there having been a dozen experiments comes from various talks/interviews Dr. Bengston gave. They are available on the web, along with some, but not all, of his papers. I also attended a talk in person.

BTW in one of the experiments geomagnetic probes were placed near the cages of the mice, both the experimental ones and the controls, which were in another lab. At the times when Dr. Bengston did energy healing on the mice the geomagnetic probes, which normally register a random pattern, began to show an organized wave, the same organized wave in both places, regardless of the distance. Other geomagnetic probes set up as controls in other places did not show the same patterns. Bengston published an article about this: “Anomalous DC Magnetic Field Activity during a Bioenergy Healing Experiment.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 397-410, 2010. (with Margaret Moga)

Another experiment not involving mice showed that Bengston’s brainwaves and the brainwaves of the people he treated became synchronized. This has been shown with other modalities too, such as Reiki. The results of the experiments involving Bengston were published in:
“The Healing Connection: EEG Harmonics, Entrainment, and Schumann’s Resonances.”Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 24, no. 4,Winter 2010, pp. 655-666. (with Luke Hendricks and Jay Gunkelman)

From past experience I know that you will now all get your panties into a twist about the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Be my guest. But the experiment with the geomagnetic micropulsations seems to suggest a mechanism for the healng of the control mice. The organized pattern recorded by the probes has been referred to as “negative entropy”, and the hypothesis has been advanced elsewhere, not by Bengston, that one of the ways energy healing works is through creating “negative entropy”. There are actually scientists out there interested in the phenomenon.

Good night, everyone. Sleep well in the knowledge that there is still stuff out there left to discover.

Micropulsations or geomagnetic pulsations are responses to changes in the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is a cavity in the solar wind, which is the result of the geomagnetic field (earth’s magnetic field) impeding the direct entry of the ionized gas (plasma) of the solar wind into the cavity. Micropulsations were first observed and published by Balfour Steward (also spelled Stewart) in 1861. He described pulsations with frequencies ranging from 3 mHz to 30 mHz. Today, geomagnetic pulsations cover the frequency range from 1 mHz to 1 Hz. Pulsations are divided into two classes, continuous and irregular, each of which are further divided according to the period of the pulsations.

Some research has found that the variations in the geomagnetic field strength (which micropulsations are a response to) can affect one’s health, especially cardiovascular health. Dr. Eliyahu Stoupel published his results in the Bio-Electro-Magnetics Institute (vol. 1, no. 1) in the spring of 1989. Research into micropulsations and their resonances may also be applied to space meteorology, field-line resonances (FLRs) in the magnetospheres of other planets, and other geomagnetic activity (GMA), including geomagnetic storms and flares.

JGC:Yes, something did that, but there’s no rational reason to conclude that Bengston had anything to do with the mice’s survivals.

One way of looking at it, is that the natural course of events when you inject mice with a dose of unrelated, tissue-cultured cancer cells, is for the cells to proliferate madly for a while and create a tumour, until the immune systems of those mice kick into gear and wipe the tumours out again.

What happened in Bengston’s 10 experiments — the ‘test’ and ‘control’ arms of the five reported studies — is that the natural course of events did indeed happen, 10 times.

If people prefer to interpret this in terms of “energy healing” (with a form of otherwise-unknown energy) and “quantum entanglement” (with a form of quantum theory unknown to quantum theorists), then there is little one can do except remember Schiller’s aphorism — the one about a human attribute against which the gods themselves contend in vain.

OK, the actual paroxyms have backed off and my eyes are nearly dry. In the piece linked above, which is really just dorking around for correlations in the solar-geophysical data, Stoupel also makes the bold assertion (citing himself) that “solar, cosmic ray and geomagnetic activity, at the begin-
ning of pregnancy may also play a role [1-9,17-19], per-
haps via their effects on chromosome function (clearly shown in the case of Down syndrome).”

Oh, no, not again.

The effect of solar activity on human biological behavior is apparently due to solar corpuscular and wave energy. High levels of cosmic rays in space leave remains of crushed atoms in the form of neutrons, and the measurement of neutron activity on the Earths’ surface serves as an indirect measure of cosmic ray activity. It is assumed that neutrons, by the nature of their physical properties, connect with H+ ions and are converted to protons, which attack cell nuclei in enzymes and other regulatory systems [19,21].

I’d also be curious if anyone could track down the history of “The Terrestrial Echoes of Solar Storms” by one A.L. Tcizevsky, which is kind of looking like the locus classicus for this whole trip, which totes polishes Bengston to a blinding shine.

So Bengston’s ‘geomangnetic probes’ detected activity at the location of both the treatment and control group cages, but not at other locations? Why then didn’t bBEngston relocate the control group to one of those other locations he had found to be unaffected by his ‘healing energy’, rather than go ahead with an experiment lacking a valid and necessary control?

RE: negative entropy, words have meanings. Entropy is defined as the quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work in a closed system, it can be calculated and is expressed as joules per Kelvin.

How exactly is ‘negative entropy’ defined, how is it calculated, and in what units is it expressed?

Oh no! Suddenly I understand everything: illness is caused by disruptions in the cosmic plane. Sounds like astrology.

Perhaps this explains the ex’s depression: the old Kozmic blues got him again,
or the other guy’s asthma – breathing in those protons,
or my Irish friend’s diverticulosis, caused by
ingesting them: ” So you’re telling me that it was the fricking PROTONS when all the time I thought it was the bloody sesame seeds!”, she’ll say.

A few web woo-meisters believe that this year’s solar flares will cause disruptions of the electrical grid AND now we can add the CNSs of living animals as well. Not sure about plants though.

Oddly, I seem to be rather healthy: could that mean that I am in tune with the esoteric harmonies of the spheres and swirling nebulae? Adrift non-randomly in supposed random-ness?
And immune to random protonic toxicity.
Mercy me. I feel as though I won the sweepstakes.

Marg, do you have any specific reason you think we are morons, or do you just have no idea what “negative entropy” means. I work in refrigeration and air conditioning, and in our industry, entropy isn’t an impressive metaphysical concept, it’s a word that gets used as often as “torque” among automotive engineers.

In case anyone’s wondering, negative entropy is created by any functioning climate control system. An air conditioner is not a closed system, because it receives outside power, so one should actually expect entropy to decrease, rather than increase.

Marg, any chance you can answer a few questions before you leave the discussion?

What is the definition of “negative entropy”, as you’ve used it in your post? How is it calculated? What units is it expressed in?

If I cited a study which found patients receiving no treatment did just as well as patient’s receiving chemo, and claimed this proves chemotherapy works, wouldn’t you rip me a new one? Why then do you expect us to accept Bengston’s study as proof energy healing works?

When you decribed Bengston taking measurements with ‘geomagnetic probes, what actual device or devices were you referring to?

Can you explain why, once Bengston had evidence that his control group was compromised (the geomagnetic probes near the control group cages also generated an organized waveform whenever he attempted to heal the treatment group mice) he didn’t halt the experiment and devise a valid negative control? It could have easily been done, since he’d identified locations where the organized waveform wasn’t detected, or perhaps enclosing the control group mice in a Faraday cage.

Not knowing what a “geomagnetic probe” is, I searched for a copy of the paper in question to see what they were, as my thought was also that it was a fancy name for a compass.

I couldn’t find the paper anywhere other than behind a pay wall, so if anybody out there can help a brother out…

If they are indeed anything real, compass or otherwise, it seems that we’d have the makings of a JREF challenge. We wouldn’t even need a cage of sick rats, just the quack making a single probe ‘dance around’ would probably count as a win.

Of course, the quacks will say they don’t need a million dollars, but it would be fun to watch them fail.

At the times when Dr. Bengston did energy healing on the mice the geomagnetic probes, which normally register a random pattern, began to show an organized wave, the same organized wave in both places, regardless of the distance.

some of Bill Bengston’s mouse experiments, in which geomagnetic probes set around the cages of sick mice showed that the earth’s geomagnetic micropulsations, which normally show up as a random pattern of spikes, became a visibly organized series of waves (referred to as “negative entropy”) at the times the mice were being healed.

(this is the Judith who was also commenting on the Reiki thread, in alternation with Marg).

OK, so he coughs this up in the January–March 2010 issue of Edge Science:

Margaret Moga and I have done three mice experiments on mammary cancer at her lab at Indiana University Medical School, and while going through the usual routine of hands-on healing, also strategically placed geomagnetic probes to test whether there might be some interesting environmental correlates to the healing. And so we examined DC magnetic field activity during hands-on healing and distant healing of mice with experimentally induced tumors. And, in act, during the healing sessions we observed distinct magnetic field oscillations adjacent to the mice cages beginning as 20–30 Hz oscillations, slowing to 8–9 Hz, and then to less than 1 Hz, at which point the oscillations reversed and increased in frequency, with an overall symmetrical appearance resembling a “chirp” wave. The waves ranged from 1–8 milligauss peak-to-peak in strength and 60–120 seconds in duration. We speculate that this evidence may suggest that bioenergy healing may be detectable with DC gauss meters.

While there is no direct description of the instruments, the reported values and what I imagine their budget to have been like seem consistent with something like this (if not even this. I’m really wondering, given that they’re claiming “DC” up to 30 Hz, how noise rejection was achieved. And how stably they were mounted. And the power supply.

The bit just before the negative entropy stuff about concentrating Schumann resonances in one’s pineal gland before shooting the energy out your hands seriously risks sending me into another laughing fit.

I have read that it’s all the melanin in the pineal gland that gives it those special third-eye properties. So far the alt-reallity thinkers haven’t caught onto the bafflegab possibilities of Pinopsin.

The Faraday Cage and Psi
…
The cage also has a role to play in trying to determine the mechanism by which psi effects – if they exist – are generated. If an experiment that works normally then fails when the cage is employed, this strongly suggests that some form of electromagnetic radiation is involved. The electromagnetic hypothesis would seem to be a logical idea, especially given the level to which electrical signals are essential to the brain and hence – presumably – are connected with consciousness.

Despite the attraction of the theory, most research suggests that psi is not blocked either by the presence or absence of a Faraday cage. This suggests strongly that the mechanism for psi phenomena is not electromagnetic in nature.

That said, as with most areas of parapsychology the results are not clear cut. There has been some research (1) that suggests the use of a grounded Faraday cage might actually increase General ESP (GESP)!

Which is especially bad news for those who trust in tin foil hats to protect them from external mind control.

The discovery of millions of crystals in the cells of the brain suggests that the brain might be able to tune in (similar to a radio receiver) to the surrounding earth’s emf, the crystals providing the vibratory link between the earth’s emf and the alpha brain waves, resulting in the Schuman Resonance.

There are not “millions of crystals in the cells of the brain.”
That didn’t take long at all.

Alpha is also the home of the window frequency known as the Schuman Resonance, which is the vibrational frequency of the earth’s electromagnetic field (emf). This means that the brain waves of a person in the alpha state will resonate in sympathy with the earth’s emf producing constructive interference which amplifies the vibration.

Seems to me someone has a failure of understanding where Schumann resonances come from. Amongst other things.

the window frequency known as the Schuman Resonance, which is the vibrational frequency of the earth’s electromagnetic field (emf). This means that the brain waves of a person in the alpha state will resonate in sympathy with the earth’s emf producing constructive interference which amplifies the vibration.

I am not brave enough to ask where HAARP fits into the picture, but there is little doubt that it fits in somewhere.

Note: I originally prepared this response yesterday, but shelved it when Marg announced her flounce. Since she failed to stick the flounce in record time, why, I dusted it off and brought it here for your enjoyment…

Marg doesn’t seem to realize a very key fact of the universe itself: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. She keeps arrogantly shoving in our faces chains of evidence and shrieking “See! See! See how strong this one link is! Since the rest of the chain is as strong as its strongest link, this is nigh irrefutable logic I’m giving you!”

Just the most obvious example from her latest fewmet: she gives us factoids from the Journal of Scientific Exploration and then sneers “From past experience I know that you will now all get your panties into a twist about the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Be my guest.” Basically, Marg’s syllogism is:

1. It was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
2.
3. Therefore, it’s almost certainly a meaningful result.

Except that if we have no reason to think the Journal of Scientific Exploration is anything but a crank journal like Medical Hypotheses or Medical Veritas, we have no reason to think the conclusion holds true. Marg might as well be saying “my cousin Bernie who I think is pretty smart thinks it’s true, therefore it’s true!” Why on earth would cousin Bernie’s opinion mean a damn thing?

Same thing with the supposedly “organized” results from the “geomagnetic probes” (did Bengston have a reason to think these would show results, or did he just make sure his experiment had lots of endpoints?) Scientists are interested in the phenomenon and are calling it “negative entropy.” Wheeee. Are these “scientists” any better than those who drew elaborate phrenological maps a century ago? They were very good at making authoritative declarations and giving things exciting names that made it sound like they knew what they were talking about, but they didn’t.

Yawn. You are all way too predictable. Tell you what, take it up with Bengston in person. He gives free talks a few times a year (usually the day before his workshops, which don’t cost thousands of dollars as somebody earlier claimed). You can find the talks announced on his website, http://www.bengstonresearch.com well before the event.

BTW the statement that he should have moved his control mice to where there was no geomagnetic effect illustrates exactly how moronic some of you are being about all this.

The probes were never directly affected. There had to be a cage of sick mice nearby for the effect to occur. Therefore, wherever Dr. Bengston moved the mice, the effect would have followed also.

Would have followed, or did follow? Did Bengston actually try moving the cages?

If we assume all this to be true, that there is no way to isolate the control and treatment mice from bengston’s supposed healing energies, neither by moving cages nor using by Faraday cages, etc.–the experimental as designed is fundamentally incapable of providing any meaningful result: quite simply, without a valid control there’s nothing to discuss.

Thank you for remaining to answer this question, at least. Can I expect you’ll also respond to the others? I’m particularly interested in whether or not you would accept a study which found patients receiving chemotherapy fared exactly as well as patients who received no treatment whatsoever as credible proof chemotherapy works.

The probes were never directly affected. There had to be a cage of sick mice nearby for the effect to occur. Therefore, wherever Dr. Bengston moved the mice, the effect would have followed also.

So Bengston can’t directly cause a ‘geomagnetic probe’ to fluctuate, but a cage of sick mice will ‘rebroadcast’ his magic healing energies as a magnetic field? Is that what I’m expected to believe?

I note in Narad’s post that Bengston claims to have noted

The waves ranged from 1–8 milligauss peak-to-peak in strength and 60–120 seconds in duration.

However, in the description of the milligauss meter that Narad provides, we read “the Earth’s field is typically about 500 milligauss”. I’ve never had a chance to play with a gauss meter, but I’d bet that just walking by the meter would cause a 1 to 8 milligauss fluctuation. It sure sounds like a noise to me.

Belief in *psi* was fashionable in educated, sophisticated
London, Paris, Vienna, NY and Boston more than 100 years ago AND psychologists, James and Jung amongst them, wrote about how it could be studied *scientifically*. I enjoyed how Freud himself regarded common beliefs ( pre-cognition, prophetic dreams) and showed how they might be explained in a more mundane, parsimonious fashion by a person who studied human abilities and emotions.

In the past 100 years, we’ve learned a great deal more about psychological processes and physics plus new instruments and means of measurement have been developed YET has any SERIOUS research revealed even an inkling of evidence for *psi*?

One of the woo-meisters I survey has spoken about his own research ‘healing’ mice by prayers performed by acknowledged ‘healers’ ( 1970s? 1980s?) which yielded spectacular results- yet has this ever been published?

Larry Dossey was widely publicised 20 years ago: has his research goe anywhere since then?

Beliefs of this sort provide comfort for people and thus persist: it would be wonderful if we could speak to the dead because they somehow persist somewhere and that their personalities didn’t dissolve into nothingness. It would be great if healers could vaporise cancers without resorting to surgical instruments and cutting through flesh. It would be fabulous if we could predict the future and avoid terrible accidents and make fortunes in the market.

All of those *psi* abilities are idealisations of human abilities that we DO have: we recall the dead and incorporate their qualities into ourselves, we look at photographs that trigger memories; scientists use technology to find therapies that harm the patient less as they cure; through analysis of data we can predict natural disasters and economic events better than our ancestors could.

In the past several decades, we’ve learned a shocking amount about the brain : there are MRIs and other scans that illustrate differing abilities and conditions in living people ( e.g. LONI), that can show the progression of devastating illness that destroy parts of the brain and result in psychosis or dementia. Yet we haven’t found any solid evidence for powers beyond natural ones like memory, perception, reasoning, attention and even social skills.

So, if we can’t find its locus or measure its power by instruments that measure minute quantities of energy, what is it? If it is insubstantial and non-local? My guess is ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ which is but another metaphor for human abilities perfected and non-existent.

And Marg, I would truly like to believe in this, but I can’t . I actually think that people have a tendency to believe that helps them live better in our un-predictable, sometimes disastrous, frightening world.

If our responses are predictable, Marg. it’s because we’re responding to the same predictable expressions of ignorance.

Like it or not (and I know you don’t) scientific experiments do not default to “earth-shattering and paradigm-changing.” You keep acting on the false premise that they do, that if anything unexpected happened in Bengston’s experiments, it supports the idea that something magical and mystical and wonderful was just proven to be there around the corner. This is not science. You don’t get to tell people you were the winner of the race just because you didn’t come in dead last. You don’t get to tell people you won the baseball game just because there was at least one inning where you didn’t strike out. You don’t get to trumpet how we’re on the verge of a revolutionary change in medicine because one experiment which FAILED to show any difference between the tested intervention and placebo had instruments which were at best tangentially related to the actual subject of the study give anomalous readings.

And the more you predictably keep repeating your false claims that Bengston’s screwed-up experiments are meaningful, the more we’ll give our predictable response that Bengston’s experiments are no more “science” than counterfeit bills are “currency.”

I was taking another look at the Society for Scientific Exploration and came across two target-rich areas for skeptics: firstly a page of video links to talks on a variety of subjects (one by Bengston about a third of the way down the page), the second a page of links to articles again on a variety of topics (there’s link to an article by Bengston about half way down the page). I’m not sure what to make of some of this material, as some seems fairly sensible, while some seems like utter BS. There seems to be a sort of consensus there that does not resemble the scientific consensus I am familiar with. In their world precognition, remote viewing and telepathy are proven fact, as are energy healing, acupuncture and homeopathy. It’s a bit like a weird parallel universe, but inhabited by (apparently) well-credentialed scientists.

For example I just watched with some amusement a talk on how you can use remote viewing to predict changes in the the stock market (I thought of you Denice). I couldn’t stomach one on how a woman was cured of Asperger’s through two methods, firstly, “to provide coaching of behavior in this very bright and mature 18 year old woman who was suffering from problems in learning mathematics, inattention, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, lack of feeling in the left hemisphere of her brain and a symptom she called “galloping,” a practically all-day pacing back and forth due to an inner sense of urgency”, which seems reasonable, but also, “to heal using the Levashov Method of mental intention to scan and enter the etheric and astral bodies of Gwen’s (fictitious name) subtle body structure and make corrections where needed”.

If any of you have a few minutes to kill, I would be interested in what those with specialist knowledge make of some of the topics you are familiar with that are discussed there. Those areas where I do have some specialist knowledge do seem like nonsense to me, but my physics and astrophysics are rusty, as is my understanding of neuroscience and consciousness studies and several other areas. So little time, so much interesting information. Anyway, is there any wheat amongst the chaff, or is it all chaff?

It’s a bit like a weird parallel universe, but inhabited by (apparently) well-credentialed scientists.

I’m reminded that Vallée was the very first ApJ author that I handled. Kinda surprised to see Yervant Terzian on the list. Anyway, I just glanced at “Is There a Mars Effect?” Gauquelin would seem to be shooting himself in the foot by noting, “Actually, the more recent obstetric procedures tend to modify the natural (circadian) cycle of labor and birth. Fortunately, the athletes were not born that recently, and their births still reflect a spontaneous pattern.” (Citations omitted.) I mean, what, it doesn’t “work” if labor is induced? Mars is actually on a mission?

Actually, we all–each and every one of us–lack feeling in both hemispheres of our brains.

I didn’t spot that. Anyway, I seem to recall that the whole hemispheric specialty thing has been largely debunked. Most of us have a functioning corpus callosum so experiments with split brain patients are of limited relevance.

If there is a signal in the noise it seems vanishingly unlikely that it is caused by the position of Mars in the sky, but more likely something that correlates with both that and some other factor that affects behavior. It seems reasonable that a child conceived in the winter might be different to a child conceived in the summer, for example, and I think there is some evidence for that. Of course even more likely is that the correlation itself is an artefact. It’s interesting that in so many of these studies they seem to detect a signal that vanishes when examined more closely, and they then spend years chasing shadows. It reminds me of the phenomenon of clinical trials that initially seem positive, but further studies are disappointing.

You are all way too predictable.
It is because our pineal glands are coupled to the 7.83-Hz Schumann Resonance of the Earth’s emf. That leaves little room for unpredictability.

Tell you what, take it up with Bengston in person.
If Bengston takes the trouble to writes comments in a Respectful Insolence thread, I imagine that someone will respond to him. At the moment, it’s Marg writing comments in a RI thread and receiving critiques of her ideas.
Why should we go to the organ-grinder in person?

Oh, Krebiozen, I tried!
I looked over the list of articles, hoping to find something about consciousness, memory or personality that I might delve into seriously BUT
then after looking over the AUTHORS and running across ‘H.Bauer/ H.H. Bauer’ several times in a relatively short list… well, he is highly ranked amongst chief HIV/AIDS denialists, I mean DISSENTERS. And an expert on the Loch Ness monster- so I suppose I became judgmental .. you know that old saw about the company people keep giving us valuable hints about their quality etc.

I might go back after my headache dissipates.
-btw- I myself do remote viewing all of the time but I call it either visual memory or imagination. I’m odd that way.

Aside from being able to release the energy at unexpected moments to make funny hand noises, of course

Is that like armpit farts?

I’ve said it before, life would be so much simpler without ethics. As a marginally accomplished scientist, I think how famouser I could be by selling out to the sCAM side. I could do it and throw my position behind it and they’d love me.

As I said I have an ethical streak. Not so much a moral streak, as I could easily see myself ruling in hell (I figure, if the christians are right, then satan would certainly appreciate all of his “work” I’ve done on earth so I’d have that going for me), so it’s not like I don’t have a satanic side, but when it comes to colluding with scam artists, I draw the line. Thesew folks are bloody evil.

It sounds like you had a similar experience to mine when I saw familiar names like Maccabee, Radin, Vallee, Stevenson, Puthoff, Targ, Gauquelin, Sheldrake, Hoyle, Wickramasinghe… I suppose that shows where my interests used to lie, until I got tired of all that. I still find it fascinating that so many scientists spend their time chasing, but never catching, rainbows.

By the way, I don’t think my diversion is as OT as it seems at first. I think the phenomenon of people seeing and pursuing patterns in noise has a lot to do with the kind of quackery often discussed here. I’m not convinced, as Marry Me, Mindy appears to be, that these sCAMsters all know they are selling false hope. I’m pretty sure most of them genuinely believe in it. It’s just that these kinds of belief have a much greater potential to do serious damage in the area of health, than believing parrots are telepathic, that you can remote view climate change or whatever.

two target-rich areas for skeptics: firstly a page of video links to talks on a variety of subjects …, the second a page of links to articles again on a variety of topics…

Lots of blogging material there to be sure, but one can’t just write about “crazy stuff that intelligent people take seriously” without soon reaching satiation, because there’s SO MUCH crazy stuff that people believe. Eventually you starting for “crazy stuff that stands out in some way”.

It’s a bit like a weird parallel universe, but inhabited by (apparently) well-credentialed scientists.
Reminds me of the Fortean Times but without the sense of humour.
I see Persinger’s on the list.

I wonder if we can smell woo?
I find myself in the uncomfortable (RL) position wherein I know a lovely, bright man, who is entirely well-meaning and expert at what he does, whose daughter is directing a documentary of what-might-be-woo ( concerning athletic training/ performance linked to a factor that may have some physiological merit) I don’t want to entirely lower the boom and I haven’t as yet read the whole thing but I fear I might have very bad news for the father. Who I don’t want to hurt.

So far, I have warned him that her project may have merit but she should be very wary of marketting engines- like alt med websites with high rankings who might use her and who often are associated with dodgy business and science. I guess at somepoint I should write something up for her. I’d also hate to see her hurt or, as an innocent trying to break into a field, get used as someone else’s vehicle. And I don’t want to lie to these people. But I also wouldn’t want to see a young person’s career start out badly.

HDB,
The sheer volume of nuttiness is a bit overwhelming, but it’s the scientists who should really know better but have bought into the crazy that fascinate me. I did notice browsing through some Edge Science volumes that quite a number have strayed some distance out of their area of expertise, like Bengston, a sociologist, wandering into energy medicine and cancer, and Sheldrake, whose PhD is in biochemistry, postulating morphogenetic fields and psittacine telepathy. BTW I know the chap who founded Fortean Times, who lives not far from me, and I used to attend the Fortean Unconventions which were quite fun, though I enjoyed the pub afterwards even more.

Denice,
That’s a bit of an unenviable quandary you have there. Remember that disillusionment may hurt but it’s a good pain.

I’ve never been in the UK at the right time of year for an Unconvention, alas — when I was living in London in the late 80s the FT’s social activities were restricted to a stall at the Alternative Press festivals in Conway Hall. Had a few beers with Paul Sieveking though.

Antaeus was too generous:You keep acting on the false premise that […] if anything unexpected happened in Bengston’s experiments, it supports the idea that something magical and mystical and wonderful was just proven to be there around the corner. This is not science.

I emphasise that nothing unexpected happened in Bengston’s experiments. Bengston reckoned that it was a surprise for one particular strain of inbred mice to have sufficiently strong immune systems to destroy one particular strain of cultured tumour cells — but he had nothing to support that assumption. The only relevant publications are decades out of date, when mouse strains and tumour cell lines are both continuing to evolve with each generation.

” we’re now in the land of weird energy fields”
Yes and I sense a disturbance in the Force.

Seriously, woo seems obsessed with the idea of energies and waves, having apparently given up on bio and physio.

I have heard a tale about Rife’s assistant ( or wife) having saved a ledger filled with the curing frequencies he had discovered : each one specific to a particular illness. Of course, no one knows where this treasure now is located.

Similarly, energy medicine ( or psychology) may be described as an attunement of a person’s unwieldy energy patterns being brought into line by a healer who serves as a human tuning fork, coaxing the bad vibes into allignment.
Chakras- wheels of energy, may be similarly balanced through meditating or repeating an assigned syllable ( by sound vbrations).TCM balances Qi by various methods.

I think that energy/ waves is a step on the immaterial/ material scale that leaves the purely material behind: it may be halfway to ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’- which is where they’re really headed.

@ DW
Yes we can smell woo. Mercaptans, maybe. I respect your expertise! Do you intend to write a review, monograph, or book?
And yeah, Marg, nothing like seeing some very smart & educated people take the bait and try to explain some elements of real-world science to the deluded provocateurs who drop in now & then. Some of the threads amaze me.

@DW
This is where smart, educated people who have been completely brainwashed into thinking that nothing completely new could ever be discovered again try to impose that point of view on someone else who thinks otherwise.

Similarly, energy medicine ( or psychology) may be described as an attunement of a person’s unwieldy energy patterns being brought into line by a healer who serves as a human tuning fork, coaxing the bad vibes into alignment.

Yes, that appears to be the general belief. Seems kind of consistent with the results of Bengston’s studies with geomagnetic probes.

Marg’s whole argument is ridiculous. Even if Bengston could do what she says, which is so far beyond rational that it is invisible in the real world, so what? Can anyone else do it? No? So what good is it? Let’s compare him to Uri Geller who claimed to be able to bend spoons. Again, so what? What possible use is there in the world of such a useless skill? Who benefits?
I know that if these charlatans could actually do what they say they can do, which they can’t, it would mean that all the known laws of physics would have to be changed but I am just pointing out how useless it is for one person to display a skill that no one else has. I can wiggle my ears, one at a time. Seems to me that is at least as impressive.

Remembering the time someone dropped a flask-full of mercaptans in the cold-room – more phew than woo…
Marg,

This is where smart, educated people who have been completely brainwashed into thinking that nothing completely new could ever be discovered again try to impose that point of view on someone else who thinks otherwise.

Of course completely new things can and will be discovered, but when someone claims they have made such a discovery, the quality of evidence they provide has to be high, which includes replicability. I would love to see Jones’ and Ho’s work replicated by someone else – their claims that stimulating acupoints associated with vision in the foot cause the visual cortex to light up on fMRI should be easy enough to test, using a more robust double-blinded methodology (IIRC visualizing something also causes the visual cortex to light up on fMRI so expectation could be a serious confounder). Until then I remain skeptical, particularly as it seems certain that acupuncture as practised today was invented in the 1930s, not developed through thousands of years of trial and error as Jones suggests.

Some of Jones’ paper on pranic healing made me chuckle I must admit, such as, “These experiments represent, to the best of our knowledge, the first experimental observation and measurement of karmic intervention” and, “A Newtonian physics world view, which serves as the basis for contemporary biology and Western medicine, is incapable of explaining these experimental results; however, the data are quite consistent with a quantum mechanical world view”. I’m afraid I find it hard to take that sort of thing very seriously.

Did Marg just call psychology energy medicine?
No Marg psychologists do real experiments with real controls and results that can be duplicated. That is like calling quack medicine for the body real medicine. Oh wait, you do that too

This is where smart, educated people who have been completely brainwashed into thinking that nothing completely new could ever be discovered again

Perhaps the stupidest comment I have ever read here.

Marg, apparently you are not aware that there are plenty of folks here even whose entire careers depewnd on the fact that there are new things to be learned! It is what folks like me do for a living – discover new things that people did not know before.

The idea that these smart people can’t accept something new is about as clueless ad hominem that can be. Created

The problem isn’t the unwillingness to believe that anything completely new can ever be discovered: it’s that you’ve offered no actual evidence something new has actually been discovered.

I keep asking this question, and you keep persistently failing to answer it: if we offered a study which found cancer patients receiving chemotherapy did just as well as cancer patients receiving no treatment at all, would you consider that evidence science had been “discovered” chemotherapy cures cancer?

I thank you for your interest :I actually don’t want to write a book ( although I have thought about a story updating Thomas Hardy where the characters live in highrises and use electronic communications but that might be entirely too close to home for me).
We are engaged in a collective endeavor and I work very hard to share what I know and what I find.

@ Kr (7:59)
The section of Jones paper you quote has me suspecting a Sokal-style parody – but it’s a bit of a task, actually, to spoof material that is intrinsically a self-parody. But it’s not easy for someone trained in critical thinking and reasoned argument to spout gibberish at length. Sokal has discussed this in his commentary on how & why he wrote & published that spoof – “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”.
“Newtonian physics world view..” Phew! Reminds of an exchange I had ~ 20 yrs. ago with a friend, newly minted Ph.D. with a post-modern bent. I’d expressed interest in the molecular biology of neurology or some such thing & she responded something like, “Oh, so you have a Newtonian approach…” And i was like, “I’m not sure what you mean but my interest in is how things work…”.
“Newtonian world-view” rhetoric is generally followed by quantum-mechanical and/or relativistic nonsense.

About SB people being brainwashed:
I’d argue quite the opposite- many people here have had experience with alt med, new age thought, religion and esotericism of various sorts. Some people are converts to SBM *from* woo. And just possibly- a few of us might understand how brainwashing and propaganda work.

No one tells me how to think. I’m over 50 and can easily recall movements that expounded new age ideas in the 1970s and 1990s.. I was fortunate to begin my university education at a very young age and didn’t start out in social science- I studied art and literature and life sciences as well. I did entertain possibilities beyond the accepted norms but always came back to what seemed most feasible.

It comes down to whether results and evidence can be shown OR if there is a possible mechanism that explains the action postulated. If you have one, it might eventually lead to the other. But when you look over data that can be explained other ways more easily, is haphazardly acquired or supports a product OR there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism, you often become jaded.

About mechanisms:
how would this work? We can detect extremely small amounts of energy and minute biological changes. If someone is transmitting something or receiving something, we should be able to detect something. And where would this occur? What part of the brain? Or body?

One woo-meister I survey talks about ‘energy exchanges’ being his method of healing: he lays hands on people. OK, this shows a location – hands. If there is something, why hasn’t it been measured? People report these healings since the early days of humankind. Now we have sensitive instruments.

I sometimes think that people who are entranced with alt med might have a better time of it if they studied art, literature or music where emotions and creativity can rule unhindered and speculation has no negative consequences.

@Mrs Woo
See, this is what I mean by intelligent people being surprisingly dense. What the results suggest is a correlation between healing and local changes in geomagnetic micropulsations. The nature of the correlation needs to be investigated.

@Krebiozen
But a lot of the gadgets that you use rely on quantum physics.

@Marg – but you also insist that creatures he had no intention of healing were also healed. So just how does his healing work? If it is unintentionally healing mice, why wasn’t it also unintentionally healing every single living being within the experimental area?

If he can “heal” – is he sure he can and is the one doing the healing if he can’t even control “what” he his healing?

I don’t mind being called dense. I am regularly reminded I am not nearly as educated as some of the people who regularly comment on this blog (not by them; they are very gracious; rather, when they discuss things I haven’t had a formal education in I absorb what I can and try to read what papers are available without paying as I find them). Besides – if you’ll call Ph.D.’s who are arguing with you within their area of expertise morons, I consider being called dense a compliment…

On an subatomic level, yes. I don’t think that means that mice can become quantumly entangled, or that mere intention has effects on healing.

It has been measured.

But Jones found that in pranic healing “the shielding of cells from EMF and gamma radiation had no effect on the results”, which excludes the kind of pulsing electromagnetic fields the article you linked to claims is responsible for energy healing. Something there doesn’t add up, methinks. That’s only one of several serious flaws a cursory glance at that article reveals.

Dear Mrs. Woo, I didn’t start out here by insulting people, I only began to respond in kind after several people (most notably @Antaeus Feldspar) insulted me. It is generally not in my nature to throw around insults but apparently I can be provoked into it.

To all: it is called “subtle energy”. It is not called subtle because it is hit-you-over-the-head obvious. People like Bengston, Oschman, Radin, Tiller and Swanson (among others) are trying to figure out what it is and what it does. People like you are flinging poop at their efforts and ridiculing them because you simply cannot even conceive of the merest possibility that what they are looking at is real. Labs and scientific journals are generally run by people like you, hence people like them have had to create their own society and journal to publish their results.

Bengston has been having a hard time even getting mice for his experiments. The mice always heal, but the ethics review boards say that putting them in Bengston’s experiments would expose them to undue hardship. He would love nothing more than to have the opportunity to do human studies, but no one will allow him to do one.(Of course my information here could outdated.) He could, for instance, do a study with newly-diagnosed stage-3 or 4 pancreatic cancer patients who are too far gone for anything other than palliative chemotherapy. If he healed a bunch of them, would you believe that what he does is real? Then, as a next step, he could do a double-blind study, if people agreed, in which one group received palliative chemo and sham healing and the other saline solution and Bengston healing (which he could do from a distance, so no one would need to be the wiser), and we could see which group does better. But quite likely the ethics review boards that wouldn’t allow mice to be exposed to the undue hardship of receiving energy healing would be even more squeamish about people.

If any of you have the clout to arrange something like that, contact Bengston.

Seriously: I once went to a presentation about veganism and auras: the aura person went through her beliefs and put up a white screen. lowered the overhead lighting and had people stand in front of it- including yours truly- she said I had a lavender and blue aura. A very nice one.

Looking this up at a reiki website today, I learn that I am ( was) good at communication and am a visionary. Oh!

Now anyone who studied art or visual perception can tell you that there is a phenomenon called simultaneous contrast where you will see the OPPOSITE because of what is going on in the receptors ( so light/ dark, red/green, blue/orange etc; long story- lateral inhibition, edge detection, horseshoe crabs etc). So if you place a red square on a white ground, you’ll see a tinge of green along the border, the reverse wih a green square. You can do this at home.

The theory of perceptual contrast assumes much less that the theory of aura perception which would postulate special abilities without known or measurable mechanisms of action. We can say: cells.

To all: it is called “subtle energy”. It is not called subtle because it is hit-you-over-the-head obvious.

Do you really think you’re laying down some sort of novel trip?

There is no “subtle body” (linga-sarira). The phenomenological body is always imaginary. Aloofness from prakrti, kaivalya, or whatever you want to call it, is impossible since distance and the space-time continuum itself are prakrti, and there is no distance between abstracts, at least not where I come from. The monist Vedanta of Badarayana and his ilk is less objectionable than the Vedanta of Samkara or Ramanuja, but much ado about nothing in any case.

All phenomenology is flux (samtana) and an aggregate lacking self (samghata), as Hume, in effect, says. Instantaneous “manifestation” of capacity instantaneously “obliterated,” so to speak. Not only is there no objective “reality” whatever (sunya-vada), there is no subjective “reality” whatever. The term “reality” is meaningless. Nabokov, a solipsistic nihilist, was right. It is the only word in the English language that should be placed, routinely, between quotation marks (to emphasize its mere idiomatic utility).

I recently gave away my entire collection of FT (mostly of the commercial A4 variety) to an appreciative acquaintance, and donated most of my collection of books on the weird and esoteric to the Charles Fort Institute. It felt good.

One of these days someone is going to twig that the experimenter’s consciousness affects the outcome of experiments. Oh wait, I think physicists already have ….

Actually, behavioral scientists did it, not physicists. A number of studies showed that someone doing an experiment may be tempted, more or less consciously, to influence the result of the experiment accordingly to his/her expectations.
It’s called experimenter bias.
By example, provide a group of students with similar rats, but tell them that they randomly got a smart rat, or a dumb rat. And then, have the rats running a maze or something similar. Weirdly enough, the students who were told they got smart rats had better results. Article: A longitudinal study of the effects of experimenter bias on the operant learning of laboratory rats.
Rosenthal, Robert; Lawson, Reed
Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2(2), 1964, 61-72.
Quite old, but there have been plenty of articles confirming the results since then.

Oh, wait, the experimenter’s influence is carried out by the physical handling of the animal, not by psionic waves. Carry on, carry on.

Didn’t they cover that in your physics classes? How the successful formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate at extremely low temperatures or the coupling of electrons into BCT pairs in a superconductor depend crucially upon the researcher maintaining the correct state of consciousness throughout the experiment? That was part of third-year lectures for me.

That’s what went wrong with cold fusion… Pons and Fleischmann allowed unsympathetic witnesses into the laboratory too early, and their skeptical consciousness banjaxed the effect. I believe there is an article on this in Edge Science.

To all: it is called “subtle energy”. It is not called subtle because it is hit-you-over-the-head obvious.

Then one wonders how the energy manages to heal anything at all. Gravity is also ‘subtle’, in the sense that it is a very weak force. Yet we can detect the presence of planets just from the effects of its gravity on another planet.

How is it we can’t measure energy healing but we can detect such other ‘subtle’ things? (And part two of that question: if we can measure tiny magnetic changes, how come we can’t measure energy healing which somehow uses magnetic forces?)

Serious question: has anyone tried to use the power of energy healing – or whatever it is – to move an (super strong) Earth magnet?

Labs and scientific journals are generally run by people like you, hence people like them have had to create their own society and journal to publish their results.

Ah, I get to use my bingo card…

Big Science conspiracy. Check.

The mice always heal, but the ethics review boards say that putting them in Bengston’s experiments would expose them to undue hardship.

What now? Can the regulars inform me whether this makes any sense? Because it doesn’t to me…

And Occam’s razor isn’t applicable? How is it not applicable?

@Denice

Thanks for that explanation about auras. I often noticed quite an obvious tinge around objects at times: but I wear glasses all the time and assumed it was to do with refraction. (Some of it would be for obvious reasons… ) Now I’m going to pay more attention to when it happens and see when it’s my glasses and when it’s not.

I put a post with the words “experimenter bias” and “animal handling physically influences the outcome” following a discussion about a searcher who thought he mentally influenced the outcome of his experiences.
I’m waiting to see what sort of hare is going to rush out of the bushes…

[outcomes] depend crucially upon the researcher maintaining the correct state of consciousness throughout the experiment

Ah, so don’t go to sleep until your experiment is over?
That could explain a number of failed tests I experienced. The number of times I found on the morning that my instrument got jammed about one hour after I left the previous evening…
(eh, “recall bias”? what do you mean?)

Marg doesn’t get that we’re not the enemy: we just want to use words appropriately.

If you call research ‘science’ that implies certain characteristics- it means that you are demonstrating something, explaining certain effects, showing how effects are attributable to particular variables and not others, RULING OUT things, showing mathematically how the effect is not due to chance alone, linking this to past studies, showing OTHERS how to replicate your data, using parsimony etc.

On the other hand, there are also ‘belief’ and ‘faith': it’s important to keep data and belief separate as Helianthus points out ( re the ‘halo effect’/ experimenter bias). That’s what controls, seeking confounders, using statistics, having multiple experimenters, blinding, replication et al. is trying to accomplish. We know that what we see is often NOT what is there without us: we need to control for our own effect.

There’s nothing wrong with having faith or belief: it’s just not right to call it science.. If a healer calls upon the power of her g-d/dess or upon the arcane powers of the universe itself: there’s nothing wrong about that. If she proclaims special powers or that immeasurable, invisible forces are at work, healing people- no problem.

There’s only a problem if you call what is rightly labelled ‘religion’, ‘science': they’re different; they don’t follow the same rules; they have different purposes. Religious fervor interferes with scientific observation because it itself is a bias that tilts results in a pre-determined direction: the answer is known in advance. And can’t be wrong.

If a person wanted to scientifically study the effects of faith or belief: that is entirely possible but there is a need for controls, outside observers,statistical analysis and all of the usual methods of eliminating bias. You need testable hypotheses. This would be easy to do.

@Narad But if you are going to invoke nihilism, and state that all phenomenology is flux, and reality should be placed in quotation marks, then you might well take an axe to Newtonian physics.

And now you are missing the mark badly. I should note that I did not “invoke” anything other an extent reply of which I am fond to your actual invocation of “subtle energy.”

What in the quoted analysis do you actually object to? I don’t mind painting the target in fluorescent colors.

I don’t object to anything in the quoted analysis. I am just pointing out that it is entirely inconsistent with a reliance on Newtonian physics for all things, which seems to be a favorite pastime of the posters on this thread.

I am just pointing out that it is entirely inconsistent with a reliance on Newtonian physics for all things, which seems to be a favorite pastime of the posters on this thread.

This is just another incredibly stupid utterance on your part, Marg. Leaving aside the fact that you plainly don’t know a goddamned thing about physics, the invocation of the topic to support your mind-slop cosmic healing ideation is using the wrong tool for the job. “Bad Fazzm,” it’s been called.

You are the one who hasn’t thought through the implications of the philosophy you cited. I am not impressed by your ability to cite complicated-sounding texts you don’t seem to understand.

“Complicated-sounding”? Well, I suppose you have already demonstrated that you’re rather the simpleton, so terms such as “Bad Fazzm” might confuse you. Trust me, O ye of the empty posturing, I know that which I quoted very, very well.

No you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t have used it. You are full ot if.

Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on this devastating critique, Marg. Scholarship in this particular religious tradition is a rather specialized endeavor, with perhaps one or two dozen serious types on the planet.

Now that the thread has evolved into a discussion of the philosophical and theological bases of the Neo-American_Church Church, I for one am enjoying the prospect of a debate between Narad and Marg as to who is more knowledgeable, and I know on whom I am betting my 50 quatloos.

The phenomenological body is always imaginary … The term “reality” is meaningless. Nabokov, a solipsistic nihilist, was right. It is the only word in the English language that should be placed, routinely, between quotation marks (to emphasize its mere idiomatic utility).

This would seem to imply that the phenomenological world is also imaginary. Newton’s laws appear to do an excellent job of propping up this world that “appears to be”. Your co-debaters appear to place great faith in Newton’s laws and this phenomenological world. Explain to them that it is all illusory, just as illusory as “energy healing”, which, like everything else, is an Instantaneous “manifestation” of capacity instantaneously “obliterated,” so to speak,

[Pulls ‘The Tao of Physics’ (“includes a fresh chapter on subatomic physics”) from the bookshelf, blows off a small cloud of dust, leafs through it, briefly considers rereading it, decides against it and replaces it in bookshelf.]

We were forced to deal with dualism/ etc publicly because we studied what is called the history of ‘pre-scientific psychology’- having had a few philosophy courses previously enabled me to amaze my fellow/ sister students who weren’t at all happy with the material…my ultra-posh prof was very pleased with me for not minding.

However the entire issue never caused me to lose any sleep: personally I look at it this way, it is possible that all is indeed one substance or the other ( probably not both) and that which we experience as mind is merely an epiphenomenon or that all is indeed an illusion that mind broadcasts into our viewfinder- which is also illusory..
it’s INSUBSTANTIAL
it doesn’t make a shred of difference because if the relationships within that ( material or illusory) world remain AND the systems of relationships of how we represent that so-called world to ourselves (including their linguistic stand-ins as well as whatever our selves ARE to us) remain, we are alright and can function and operate in that world..

So the world being a drift of ideas or illusions or objects is at heart the same thing and doesn’t matter in the least. I act as if it’s real or not in some sense or the other. As long as something ELSE doesn’t intrude into it, I’ll be fine.
I get things done. You would be surprised how well.
Hope I’m clear.

This would seem to imply that the phenomenological world is also imaginary.

It is. So? This observation doesn’t mean that all of a sudden it starts doing whatever you want it to.

Newton’s laws appear to do an excellent job of propping up this world that “appears to be”.

No, what “props things up” are the psychological wish and repression system of the subject, who is just as real as everything else, which is to say, not at all.

Your co-debaters appear to place great faith in Newton’s laws and this phenomenological world. Explain to them that it is all illusory, just as illusory as “energy healing”, which, like everything else

, is an Instantaneous “manifestation” of capacity instantaneously “obliterated,” so to speak,

Why would I “explain” an utter falsehood? There isn’t any “energy healing.” You seem to be under the impression that anything goes. The appropriate tool, McPozzm, for understanding the perceived physical world is the scientific method. “Energy healing” is Fazzm. Trying to pretend that it’s some sort of quantum mechanical yet also geomagnetic mystery healing fluid squirting around between plural minds is Bad Fazzm. Really, really, bad Fazzm. A solipsistic nihilist approach, which isn’t much different from a stripped-down version of Madhyamaka Buddhism (which similarly scorns magic) has nothing but derision for such occultist bloviation.

So the world being a drift of ideas or illusions or objects is at heart the same thing and doesn’t matter in the least. I act as if it’s real or not in some sense or the other. As long as something ELSE doesn’t intrude into it, I’ll be fine.
I get things done. You would be surprised how well.
Hope I’m clear.

I believe you are.
To use an old joke, if i was to step up to one of these philosophers and slap him, he will feel the hit regardless of the reality of the universe.
Whether the world is really physical, the dream of one person, or that we are all connected to a virtual construct a la Matrix, we can function quite well by assuming the world is real and is governed by specific cause-and-effect rules.
Now, as you said, if something was to step in and offered us a red pill (or was it blue?), we will have to re-assess the way we can interact with the world.
But, to put the topic back on science, if this out-of-reality something exists and breached in, there should be ways to study its interactions with our reality.

Oh, I get it. When Siegel healed the tumor-injected mice, the Computer in charge of the Matrix noticed it (It notices everything) and healed the control mice, just to mislead us.
Forget energy healing. That we need is a bunch of hackers to rewrite the code.

I don’t think this privileges “mcpozzm” thinking as you seem to believe it does. It seems to privilege the personal, or snazzm.

Having led a sheltered life, I have never had to talk a friend on a bad trip off a ledge, which is apparently what this system is designed for. I showed/e-mailed the site to a number of friends who are not simpletons, including a scientist and a university professor, and the response I got was a) what the hell is this and b) why are you wasting my time with it? I actually found it interesting, although some of the distinctions are somewhat wobbly. It has a “Monty Pythonesque” feel to it.

Re: Mahayana’s rejection of “magic”, I believe the Elephant Path recognizes that once the mind is brought under control there can be so-called “magical” abilities, of which healing is one; these are not rejected as not possible but as not desirable if one is pursue the path to enlightenment.

@DW
Just reading Dan Falk’s _In Search of Time: Journeys along a Curious Dimension”. How interesting to read in the chapter on Newton that he attributed the intricate machinery of the universe to the divine. So when you/we use Newton’s theory to divorce science from God, we are denying Newton. Here is a sample from the General Scholium: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being”. Newton believed in intelligent design: his clockwork universe had a clock maker.

Just saying. It still happens that advanced physicists and mathematicians come around to the belief that there is indeed a God.

Newton was a creature of his times and used the language of his day. Whether he was a believer or not is irrelevant: his numbers stand on their own- I never saw a g-d constant written into any equations yet. No one has to divorce science from religion – they’ve been separated for a long time.

(-btw- ‘intelligent design’ is used to refer to the development of life forms TODAY as a substitute for evolution – not for the machinations of the solar systems and galaxies)

Most people of Newton’s day held that the universe was created by a deity: he was speaking to them, not to us.

And if some advanced physicists and mathematicians believe in a deity today that doesn’t mean anything or prove anything at all about the ultimate veracity of that idea : they are no better equipped than anyone else.

I don’t think this privileges “mcpozzm” thinking as you seem to believe it does. It seems to privilege the personal, or snazzm.

Given that I don’t think that McPozzm analysis is “privileged,” this is an odd remark to make. Would you like a cartoon to help?

Having led a sheltered life, I have never had to talk a friend on a bad trip off a ledge, which is apparently what this system is designed for.

Your ability to judge appearances is grossly inadequate, if that is what you think is “apparent.”

I showed/e-mailed the site to a number of friends who are not simpletons, including a scientist and a university professor, and the response I got was a) what the hell is this and b) why are you wasting my time with it?

How did you answer these questions?

I actually found it interesting, although some of the distinctions are somewhat wobbly.

Such as?

It has a “Monty Pythonesque” feel to it.

Well, there’s something one doesn’t hear every day. Precisely what parallels would you draw between Python and Kleps’s writings?

Re: Mahayana’s rejection of “magic”, I believe the Elephant Path recognizes that once the mind is brought under control there can be so-called “magical” abilities, of which healing is one; these are not rejected as not possible but as not desirable if one is pursue the path to enlightenment.

The “Elephant Path”? I presume this is some sort of odd Nagarjuna reference that you picked up. This is a tangent, so I will not pursue it any further than necessary: There is no “path to enlightenment.” It is not a place. It is not an attainment. It is very simple, unless one’s head is full of crazy nonsense about geomagnetic microquantum mouse-healing chirp pulsations shooting out of one’s hands. (For the purpose of definiteness, I am asserting subitism.)

Orac is the ultimate alternative cancer treatment skeptic, who’s taken over from Stephen Barrett, who was barraged with so many lawsuits for untruths that he lost that he has been forced into the background. These guys are getting paid by the pharmaceutical industry to suppress the alternative med guys. Sure, he knows his stuff; he’s a trained researcher himself, but his views are tainted by filthy lucre.

I wonder why Marg is using Newton as some sort of argument from authority? I thought “Newtonian” was an epithet amongst her ilk. What does the religious beliefs of a 17th – 18th century scientist have to do with someone apparently curing mice (including the ones he wasn’t curing) by literal hand waving?

Blah blah blah… Can no one come up with anything original anymore? It gets so tiresome after a while.

I find it fascinating though that Marg has now so completely given up on providing data to back up her cancer claims that she’s totally moved to discussions about religion and postmodernistic worldviews. With arguments from authority thrown in.

Does either have anything to do with cancer? No. But still she goes on…

@Narad

To be fair, Monty Python makes much more sense than many of the woomeisters. Especially if you consider at least one of their songs on the universe

@Flip
Kindly explain to me what is wrong with “arguments from authority”, which is an entirely accepted way of doing business in the humanities.

@Narad
“go enlighten yourself” was my rejoinder to your request for a pointer about what the Lamaists were doing. You have a computer, you can use Google, just type in “Elephant Path”, and enlighten yourself as to what it’s all about.

Re: you privileging McPozzm, I am going by the statement you made, The appropriate tool, McPozzm, for understanding the perceived physical world is the scientific method. This statement doesn’t appear to be supported by anything I read here: http://okneoac.org/dts/snazzm-fazzm-and-mcpozzm.

@Militant Agnostic
And yet the mice lived … 200+ of them, comprising nearly 100%. Someone suggested earlier that they were substandard mice that cured themselves; Jackson Labs, whose mice they were, might have a little something to say about that assertion, legally speaking. I am also not aware of a slew of cancer experiments where all the mice lived, rendering the research useless. The cancer research community might have made some kind of concerted response about that to Jackson Labs, which we would have most certainly heard about that. So how is it that only Bengston’s mice were useless, in 12 experiments over 30 years, at five different institutions?

I am also not aware of a slew of cancer experiments where all the mice lived, rendering the research useless.

I believe that in most cancer experiments on small mammals they are sacrificed (to the great God Science I presume, I can’t help resist a wry smile at that euphemism) long before they die, as leaving them to die slowly of cancer is considered cruel. Treatments are rated on effects on tumor growth or shrinkage; it is generally human experiments in which death is a chosen endpoint (human suffering not being as important as murine suffering it seems, but I digress). If I was pushed to choose between the possibility of a strain of mice developing a resistance to a cancer so that if left untreated they eventually recover, or Bengston’s energy healing having an effect, I think the former is very much more likely. A while ago I did dig around trying to find out more about the strains of mice and cancer used in the experiments, but I couldn’t find any solid data on how long they are supposed to live if untreated. I would like to see Bengston’s experiments properly replicated and debunked, as I don’t buy the skeptical indifference he claims he has witnessed in the labs he has worked in.

Orac is developing a chemo drug for breast cancer, or so I’ve read, and stands to make a lot of bucks if it’s approved by the FDA

He’s doing what? Developing an effective treatment for an illness that kills about 40,000 people* in the USA every year? That’s disgraceful. And he expects to get paid for it as well? Shocking. Only alternative treatment proponents deserve to live in luxurious $2 million mansions, after all.
*Men get breast cancer too.

If you are going to suggest that Bengston somehow managed to get defective mice for 12 separate experiments over 30 years or that trained lab assistants at 5 separate institutions somehow all managed to screw up his experiments, isn’t it time to invoke Occam’s razor, as @DW suggested?

As did the control mice. Why was that?Oh, and if you feel that spiritual experience trumps physical evidence, does that mean I can accuse you of murder based on a dream I had last night, even if the alleged victim is still alive?

All of this brings back memories: as a student I read various writers influenced by Buddhist or Hindu religion/ philosophy- including Watts and Campbell- I even had a dream about Indra’s net**: no drugs, I swear!

Getting back to the mice: over @ PRN, the head honcho has been repeatedly re-living his past ‘research’ ( the 1970s?/ Institute for Applied Biology) – supposedly, he had lab mice with cancer/ injured by radiology research *healed* by several religious healers whom he had assembled. Earlier, he had also healed similar mice with nutrient rich juices himself. He claims rates of 100%. He explains that NO journal would print his research. So it is out there.

I am informed that he also uses energy exchanges to heal participants at his retreats over the past decades. And gives them juices/ a vegan diet as well. Insurance, I’d guess.

** I dreamt that I floated in a lightly self-illuminated, pale lime-green, gelatinous sea, whose un-breaking waves rose and fell -with which I could allign my breathing; the net was suspended at the surface- the interstices wherein the gems were affixed were 9 feet apart. I was in one of the spaces between…

You have a computer, you can use Google, just type in “Elephant Path”, and enlighten yourself as to what it’s all about.

Gee, why didn’t that occur to me? Oh, wait, it did. Nothing relevant comes up at the head of the class. Of course, if you had bothered to add “Dan Brown,” it would have simplified things tremendously. As stated above, I have no interest in “paths to Enlightenment” or other encumbrances that promise to unencumber one in x simple steps or your money back. (I do still feel a bit bad about failing to restrain a snort some years ago when informed that a coworker was going to be out for knee surgery as a result of his commitment to doing 108 five-limbed prostrations every morning, though.)

Re: you privileging McPozzm, I am going by the statement you made, The appropriate tool, McPozzm, for understanding the perceived physical world is the scientific method. This statement doesn’t appear to be supported by anything I read here

The use of “McPozzm” in that which you quote was transitional, not appositive. It makes no difference; you cannot meditate away ring around the collar. This is not “privileging” anything.

Domestic mice and rats are not injected with tumors that normally kill them within 27 days.

I’m gonna be boring and predictable and ask (again) for evidence that the tumours injected into Bengston’s mice *should* have killed them within 27 days. You’d think that if this was an accepted fact, it would be supported by the lierature, in textbooks somewhere. But no. Nothing.

“The mammary adenocarcinoma (H2712) was originally ob
tained from the Jackson Memorial Laboratories at Bar Harlx>r
and transplanted in C3H/HeJ mice for a number of transplant
generations (approximately 50). Growth of H2712 was very
rapid (Chart 1). It was palpable 3-4 days postimplantation,
and rapid growth started 3 days later. At 11 or 12 days after
tumor implantation, the tumor reached a maximum weight of
3-4 gm. Also at this time some animals died, and by 15-20 days all mice had succumbed.”

“We have investigated a new and as yet totally unevaluated method for retarding the growth of tumor cells by either transient in vitro exposure of tumor cells or palpable in vivo exposure of the tumor to a non-homogeneous magnetic field. Ten million mammary adenocarcinoma (H2712) mouse tumor cells were exposed to a 38 kilogauss magnetic field (field gradient, 12 kilogauss /mm) for 20 minutes, and subsequently, were injected in equal parts into C3H/HeJ mice, the carrier strain. Mice receiving tumor cells exposed to the magnetic field had a mean survival of 18 ± 1.3 days; the mean control survival was 9.0 ± 1.3 days. In addition, another group of C3H/HeJ mice with a barely palpable mammary adenocarcinoma tumor in the hind leg (48 hours post-injection) were exposed to the same field strength for 20 minutes, with a resulting mean survival of 18.3 ± 2.25 days, compared to a mean survival of 7.9 ± 1.4 days in controls. A repeated exposure of these in vivo tumors for 20 minutes at 72 and 96 hours post-injection produced a mean survival of 21.1 ± 2.0 days. Tissue temperature within the field remained normal, and there was no obvious damage to skin or surrounding normal tissues. These experiments have demonstrated that a non-homogeneous magnetic field is a potent inhibitor of tumor cell viability and growth rate, both in vitro and in vivo, and offers promise for clinical application.”

The Tumor H2712 originated spontaneously in the mammary gland of’a C3H
mouse in 1948 at the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory. This has gone through 86 transplant generations and shows 100 per cent transplantability in
C3H strains and their F1 hybrids. The histological type is an adenocarcinoma.
…

By means of graded Gomori reactions a more complete picture could be obtained
concerning differences between 4 tumors arising in the breast tissue of mice.
These tumors have been transplanted for many generations to their original hosts
and F, hybrids with a I00 per cent take. Thus a certain homogeneity of the
tumor strain should be expected. The three tumors E0771, H2712 and dbrB are
fairly identical in Itistology, as each is an adenocarcinoma with attempts at acinar
formations…

Marg, you can post as many links about H2712 as you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that Bengston’s ‘studies’ are poorly designed, improperly controlled, and contain no statistical analysis to speak of. The fact that you’ve tunnel-visioned onto this one point about survivability is very telling.

The fact that you’ve tunnel-visioned onto this one point about survivability is very telling.
Hey, it’s my tunnel vision too!
A comment is currently in moderation — too many links — but a 1985 report from the Jackson laboratory comments on a recent mutation within the C3H/HeJ strain (one of many mutations they have incurred over the decades) that makes them much less susceptible to mammary cancer. Meanwhile the H2712 cell-line mutates in different directions.

This came up in the other Bengston-related thread… papers on mouse survival from 1966 are not dealing with the same mice.

@AdamG
I was responding to @herr doktor bimmler’s assertion that there was nothing out there to indicate that the mice should have died in 27 days.

If you actually bothered to read what I posted you would have seen that the cancer is highly virulent, highly lethal & has 100% “take”. What kind of botched experiment is it where all these mice, programmed to die, survive to full life-span cures? You are the ones who suffer from tunnel vision, and whose understanding of statistics is so compromised by this tunnel vision that you can’t see the astronomical odds against ANY of these mice surviving, let alone most of them.

It does seem that this strain of mice has undergone at least one major mutation, making it resistant to endotoxins, since 1966 when the experiment Marg posted a link to was carried out. Also, only since 1999 has this strain been free of exogenous mouse mammary tumor virus, which could have a major effect on their mortality. It’s not tunnel-vision Marg, it’s eliminating the most likely explanations of what observations have been made. Magic? This strain of mouse doesn’t behave the same way it did umpteen mouse generations ago? Or something else went awry with the experiments? It’s how science works.

What kind of botched experiment is it where all these mice, programmed to die, survive to full life-span cures?

Marg. it’s ‘botched’ because the control mice survived at the same rate that the experimental group did.

This means either the treatment didn’t work or the tumor was not properly administered. Neither explanation lends much credence to energy healing. Is this the best evidence there is for energy healing?

whose understanding of statistics is so compromised by this tunnel vision

What do you mean by this Marg? On what basis are you claiming that our understanding of statistics is ‘compromised?’

Simple question for you, Marg. What statistical test should Bengston have done? Which test is appropriate here and why?

From Bengston & Krinsley:The mice then lived their normal life span of approximately 2 years

If this experiment was indeed performed in the 1970s, this is quite an accomplishment in itself, since until the 1990s program of selective breeding that eliminated a carcinogenic virus, C3H/HeJ mice didn’t live that long. They developed spontaneous mammary tumours — originally at a median age of 40 weeks, shifting to 60 weeks after the mutation (reported in 1985, actual date not documented) that reduced their susceptibility, now over 80 weeks in the absence of MuMTV.
Now they tend to die of spontaneous hepatomas instead.

Painting the elephants bright red and calling it blue. Hey, I'm an artist, therefore it must be blue no matter what you fancypants people think

September 4, 2012

@Marg

Kindly explain to me what is wrong with “arguments from authority”, which is an entirely accepted way of doing business in the humanities.

Others will have gotten here first, but:

The clue is in that you use “humanities”. Arguments from authority don’t work in *science* which is what we’re discussing. We don’t talk about Newton because he’s a god; we talk about him because his ideas and data stand up after repeated pummeling and testing. The same goes for Galileo and Salk and all others. In fact, good science is all about ignoring where and who the data comes from. If it’s replicable and solid data, then that’s all that matters.

To put a finer point on it: even a young girl can come up with good data. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

If you really need this explained to you, then you don’t know the most basic principles of how science works. This is high school stuff.

Besides, as an artist who thinks very little of fame in the first place, I find arguments from authority to be utterly stupid when they’re used in humanities anyway. Most of the general public fall for the argument from authority when it comes to the arts, and it’s pretty bullsh*t for many reasons.

I am known for hating Shakespeare. Ask me why.

(Of course, my reasons have nothing to do with the obvious which is that in art no one actually bothers to check whether or not anything is based on reality and where postmodernism and “truth from feeling” rules the world. No wonder Marg thinks it’s acceptable for authority to win in humanities. Side point: if argument from authority truly worked in the arts, then no painter would need to die in order for their work to be worth anything. People would just recognise their genius on sight)

NONE OF THIS DISTRACTS ME FROM THE ISSUE THAT YOU HAVE POSTED NO DATA AND ARE COMPLETELY VEERING AWAY FROM DISCUSSING CANCER BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE OR REFUSE TO POST IT. FOR WHICH YOU NEED TO USE SCIENCE, NOT HUMANITIES OR GUT FEELING, TO PROVE YOUR ASSERTIONS.

So how is it that only Bengston’s mice were useless, in 12 experiments over 30 years, at five different institutions?

Do you know what replication is?

You are the ones who suffer from tunnel vision, and whose understanding of statistics is so compromised by this tunnel vision that you can’t see the astronomical odds against ANY of these mice surviving, let alone most of them

I thought I was having a discussion with MDs and researchers. It appears that I am having a discussion with artists who hate Shakespeare and Buddhist scholars who are familiar with the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh well. If all we can do is discuss philosophy of science and search the internet for mice, it is all quite a pointless exercise.

@herr doktor bimmler
Wouldn’t an externally introduced cancer qualify as an exotoxin rather than an endotoxin? It would be nice to find a cancer researcher who could tell us where these mice are at. The link you sent seems to suggest that they became less prone to developing spontaneous mammary cancer. Re: Bengston’s mice, since they developed immunity to the mammary cancer from which they were cured, they no doubt could live longer than their average cousins.

only Bengston’s mice were useless, in 12 experiments over 30 years
Just noting that the implication here — that Bengston’s research spans the period 1980 to now — contradict’s Marg’s later claim that he began “some time in 1970s”. It is also unsupported by any claims in Bengston’s papers (2000 and 2007) that the experiments had been much earlier.

Anonymous said…
What you forget are the historical controls. No mouse ever, in any experiment, lived longer than 27 days with the form of cancer that these mice were injected with. […] Dr. Bengston is now up to 10 experiments at 5 different accredited institutions, including two medical schools, and the results have been replicated in all 10 experiments. Surely you could not accuse ALL the scientists involved of such gross incompetence that they could muck up ten experiments?

and later in the same thread:Dr. Bengston had nothing to do with preparing the mice for the experiments. As I said, there have been 10 experiments in 5 different places.

Apparently to criticise the experiments is to CRITICISE THE STUDENTS who did the work, and how dare we do that!!
If the experiments were badly designed then it doesn’t matter two tugs on a dead dingo’s dick WHO performed them.

One notes that this discussion occurred in 2007, shortly after the Bengston & Moga paper described results from 5 studies (Bengston’s original four from 2000, plus one more), mentioned a 6th, and alluded to two ‘informal’ experiments; yet his defender is already talking about “10 experiments”. Rounding error.

Re: Bengston’s mice, since they developed immunity to the mammary cancer from which they were cured, they no doubt could live longer than their average cousins.
Why would sending the H2712 adenocarcinoma into the cornfield also increase their resistance to their own spontaneous diseases?

@herr doktor bimmler
The source for the experiments taking place in the 70s is Bengston’s book The Energy Cure and the talk I attended. The source for there being 10/12 experiments is also Bengston. When I attended his talk about 4 years ago he was talking about 10 experiments. In more recent talks on the internet he said 12, so I presume there have been two more since then.

I thought I was having a discussion with MDs and researchers. It appears that I am having a discussion with artists who hate Shakespeare and Buddhist scholars who are familiar with the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nah, I’m just the odd one out here. Plus, you’re repeating the argument from authority again.

Anyway, you’re still not posting actual evidence. Heck, even I could find a link that proves my point. (The wikipedia article) And I’m capable of reading and understanding a journal article. Ok, I grasp most of it. I still struggle with the maths.

I note that you don’t actually rebut my points. What, you don’t want to discuss the fact that you used a logical fallacy?

(By the way, it’s not that I hate Shakespeare: it’s that I don’t like the fact that people go to see it simply because the reputation must mean that it’s good – doesn’t matter if they can’t understand a word of it. My point, and I expected you not to ask me why I have that opinion, was that argument from authority in the arts leads one to ignore artists who are just as good, if not better, than the so called masters. People go to Shakespeare less because they like it and more because it’s familiar and safe and other people say it’s good so it must be. I only pick on Shakespeare because his reputation is known across all cultures; I could just as easily use another example from visual arts or literature or anything else. Eg. Neil Armstrong’s recent death. It’s sad and the world lost a great and courageous person: but we shouldn’t forget the thousands of engineers (etc) who worked so well to get him and the other astronauts there. Nor should the moon-auts be overshadowed by the great number of continuing scientists who travel up to the ISS whose names will never be known by the majority of the population. Their contributions are no less important to science. I make a more rational argument against authority than you do for it)

As I said the arts is allowed or even expected to rely on gut feeling and New Age-y belief systems and post-modernistic views. That has absolutely 100% nothing to do with how science works, and the two are absolutely not interchangeable in how they should work.

Good science is repeatable data. Good art is doing whatever you feel like. If science worked the way humanities do, well, the Earth would still be the centre of the universe.

The expected outcome of a woo/magical waving experiment involving mice with cancerous tumors is that all the critters die.

If this is true, then the fact that the mice lived means the experiment was not conducted properly. That’s a proper application of parsimony.

Marg, if I presented you with a clinical trial of energy healing in actual humans with cancer, and the main conclusion of the study was that not a single individual died (neither in the experimental nor the control group) would you conclude that energy healing cured their cancer? Why or why not?

@herr doktor bimmler
Here is Bengston’s story paraphrased. Around 1970 or 71 he met a psychic/healer who wanted to be debunked and thought Bengston as a sociology student would be just the right man for the job. Bengston found the man interesting and hung around with him, watching and participating in his healings and asking him questions. He set up the first mouse experiment to test the man’s healing ability in a lab, but at the last minute the psychic balked and the two of them had a major falling out.

Bengston then decided to do the experiment with himself as the healer. He had no idea what to expect. He thought that maybe the mice would not grow tumors, and when they did he decided that the experiment was a failure. When the tumors grew he wanted to terminate the experiment because he did not want the mice to suffer. But then it was pointed out to him that the mice were not suffering, and that aside from having tumors and then ugly ulcerations they were looking healthy and acting quite normal. Then the ulcerations began to heal.

When he found out two of the controls died, he went to look at the remaining four to compare them to the batch that he was treating. He saw that the control mice in fact looked far the worse for wear. But after he looked in on them, they started following the same healing pattern as the experimental mice, with a few days’ delay, and in the end both groups remitted.

In the experiments that followed he says he tried to figure out what kind of parameters were necessary for the controls to die. He found that on site, they would remit. Off site, if he didn’t know where they were, they would die.

This is his story as he tells it. I cannot say whether it is true or not. From what he says, he didn’t set out to prove that the phenomenon was real. He is still not interested in proving that it’s real; he wants to do experiments to find out more about what it is and how it works.

The talk I went to had some MDs in the audience. The ones I talked to found him quite convincing and one even said he would take Bengston’s workshop out of curiosity even though he didn’t think he’d use what he learned. What Bengston says and shows is cumulatively quite convincing; he seems to have a body of research approaching the problem from a variety of angles; healing experiments with mice with strange results, the geomagnetic probes that show organized patterns when they should be random, and fMRIs of his brain, which does weird anomalous things when he heals.

When I saw him, he said he just wanted to be able to do more experiments.

The expected outcome of a woo/magical waving experiment involving mice with cancerous tumors is that all the critters die.

If this is true, then the fact that the mice lived means the experiment was not conducted properly. That’s a proper application of parsimony.

Or, gasp, it means that energy healing actually works, although not in the expected way.

Marg, if I presented you with a clinical trial of energy healing in actual humans with cancer, and the main conclusion of the study was that not a single individual died (neither in the experimental nor the control group) would you conclude that energy healing cured their cancer? Why or why not?

Your example is not analogous to Bengston’s experiment because the mice did not just survive, they “remitted to full life-span cure”. My reaction would also depend on what kind of cancer you were treating. For instance, if you took a group of stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients and they all got cured (which is what happened to Bengston’s mice), I would have to conclude that something extraordinary happened. Your controls in that case would be all the other stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients out there who died, which is what stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients normally do. It would be impossible for you to do a statistical analysis, and everyone would say your experiment is useless. But if they said “nothing happened” they would be dead wrong, because you would have a bunch of stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients who had been cured.

And if you repeated the experiment again with the same results, I would be even more impressed, but a lot of people out there would be accusing you of using a bad experimental design, because there was no difference between your treated group and your control group, and besides, they were all supposed to die, so they clearly did not have cancer in the first place.

@Flip
I love your BLUE elephant and of course all the engineers and ISS scientists deserve their due as much as Neil Armstrong, even if their names will not be known.

I always hated going to the symphony/theater/opera just because it was the right “upper middle class” thing to do or because something famous was playing. If there is something on that you want to see or hear, that’s a different story. But I also tend to avoid things that attract multitudes.

Read: here is more unfounded anecdotal stuff that I pulled from a state of nirvana. Please ignore the lack of verifiable data as I have none.

I cannot say whether it is true or not.

Then why post it on a SCIENCE blog?

That’s a proper application of parsimony. Or, gasp, it means that energy healing actually works, although not in the expected way.

Yeah, maybe your reading comprehension sucks. AdamG said *parsimony*. It’s not A (no healing) or B (healing): it’s A, B, or C. C is where the study design is flawed so you can’t tell anything either way and parsimony suggests you go with A until better evidence shows B.

At any rate, I lost you on my logical fallacy. Please explain.

Oy…

Example:
Angelina Jolie comes up to you. She points to the sky and says the sky is red. You look up: it’s quite clearly blue. You tell her you disagree, you point to photos and spectroscopy and examples of blue paint for comparison. She doesn’t agree with you. She continues to say “it’s red”. You ask her to provide data that says the sky is red. She points to one small experiment which doesn’t use the right equipment to measure the colour of the sky. You look at the data she provides, but it doesn’t impress you. You show it to other scientists and they find many faults with it. Plus there’s 10 times more data going in the other direction and says the sky is blue.

Under your line of thinking Angelina Jolie is right simply because she’s famous. Or, because “truth is perception” so it’s red for her and blue for you.

Someone is either right or wrong. Nobel prize winners can be wrong. Young girls can publish peer-reviewed papers in well-known journals. The only thing that matters is whether or not the data or hypothesis stands up to scrutiny. Argument from authority is quite clearly a fallacy. And if you still don’t get it, you’re beyond help.

Or rather, if you still don’t get it, you’re refusing to budge because you’d prefer your postmodern worldview. At which point, I will repeat myself ad naseum:

Post some data. Other than your fanboi obsession with a single experiment.

How were the original four experiments badly designed?
I have no issue with the design of the original four experiments. Only with the *interpretation* — specifically, with the decision to ignore the ‘control’ nature of the control groups and treat them as additional Treatment groups (leaving no controls).
After that decision, it was clearly essential to have a *true* control group of mice who had been injected but offered no treatment at all — to check their life expectancy, for the current genetic make-up of the of mice, not the make-up they had X many years ago. None of this farrago of declaring groups of mice to be controls only to retrospectively relabel them as treatment groups (for increasingly complicated reasons of quantum entanglement) when they fail to die on schedule.

The source for the experiments taking place in the 70s is Bengston’s book

No. He may have first met his mentor in the 1970s. However, the book reviews I have perused — all on Bengston’s side — agree that he was a professor at the time at the time of the experiments, dating them to after he received his Ph.D in 1980. For instance:

While all this was going on, Bengston moved on with his own life. He entered graduate school and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology. He maintained his friendship with Mayrick, however, and even began trying his own hand at the healing process. Working alongside Mayrick he started to formalize the process, continually asking Mayrick how he did it—what was going on in his mind during the healing process, etc. […] It was during this time that Bengston met David Krinsley, a geology professor from Queen’s College of the City University of New York City.

And now, in honour of Bengston, I shall turn off this computer and play Alex Harvey’s “Faith Healer”.

@Flip
Correction, 12, at least according to Bengston’s latest comments.

@herr doktor bimmler
According to the book, Bengston did the first four experiments prior to getting his PhD. He says that after he failed to excite academic interest in his experiments, he chose to get back to his own field, and did not pick up the experimental trail again for two decades. The following chapter begins with the birth of his son and the attainment of his PhD in 1980.

To boil down the problem:
we want to see whether a treatment is associated with changes in the experimental group ( E) when compared to the control group ( C) that are significantly more than would be expected by chance alone..In short, diiferences between groups (BG) should be significantly more than differences within groups ( WG).( Pardon me but I can’t really do equations or draw on this machine)

To start, the two groups should be as equal as possible.
Thus, we have E= C. Hopefully.

The null hypothesis is that the two groups will remain equal despite treatment of E.
The alternate is that the E will change significantly AND C will not.

The results were that E=C. Which means that there is NO effect from treatment OR that something is amiss OR that B. cured all mice, some deliberately ( Es)
some inadvertantly ( Cs)

There are many ways to fix this that I won’t go into. The most obvious difference is B . himself : if he is the source of the cure ( or errors) remove him. OR have him present only for the E group, if HE is the treatment.

It’s much more parsimonious to believe that error is the source of the results than to suppose a new type of energy that can’t be explained by the laws of physics and biology. IF
there WERE past records of events resembling this, THEN B might have a leg to stand on so he might continue-
but there aren’t,
unless you count anecdotes and the fabled research of charlatans far and wide ( Institute of Applied Biology)

Basically, there are many ways to fix this research and B. didn’t follow up and eliminate other possiblities before trumpetting cure by energy or random looks.

Even according to you, you *think* there’s 10 experiments, maybe 12. And you’re taking Bengston’s word for it instead of posting the citations. At any rate, I mistyped. What I should have said was

One experimenter. Not the ‘er’ on the end. In other words, you need more than one scientist and more than 10 experiments. Because 1 guy and a handful of papers does not trump the thousands of other data points and papers that suggest that faith healing doesn’t work.

And I continue to note that you have not posted further evidence backing up your assertions. Furthermore, I note you have not responded to my point about argument from authority.

You know what makes a conversation interesting? When people both ask *and answer* questions.

Only in experiment one of the original four was Bengston the healer. For the other three he trained “skeptical volunteers” to do the healing. The experiments were run by the department heads of the biology departments where they took place. Other than train the volunteers in his healing technique, Bengston did not participate.

Bengston wrote his second paper to address the issue of the null hypothesis and said that it was a “Type 2 error”. The man teaches college-level statistics and sociology for a living, so one would imagine he knows statistics. BTW I illustrated the issue in a response above, using stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients as an example.

@Flip
Every scientist who cites another scientist’s experiment is using an argument from authority, as he himself has no way of knowing for certain that the experiment is valid. And it would seem many aren’t:

@Flip @DW
Bengston only did the healing in the first experiment in the original series of four; for the other three he trained skeptical volunteers and did not participate himself. The experiments were run by the department heads of the biology departments where they took place.

@DW
Bengston addressed the problem of a false null hypothesis in his second paper, “Resonance, Placebo and Type II Errors”. I think I addressed the issue in a comment above, using stage-4 pancreatic cancer patients as an example.

@AdamG
That it doesn’t appear to work with experiments based on consciousness.

In the two comments that disappeared I posted a link to an article about an alarming number of cancer experiments that were not replicable and resulted in a fairly significant number of scientific articles being withdrawn. Only in some of them were scientists fudging their results.

I think the problem of non-replicability is partly an issue of the experimenter’s consciousness affecting the outcome. I also think this will become a growing problem and eventually the scientific method will have to be re-evaluated.

You have not yet outlined the flaws in Bengston’s experimental design — which in fact was not his design, but the design of the department head of biology where the experiment took place. You are assuming that there was a flaw because of the outcome. The design was standard: experimental group + control group. The experimental group was actively treated, the control group was not. The control group was only looked in on, and no one intentionally gave it any treatment. Do other experimenters not check in on the control group to see how they are doing?

Maybe I should ask, how would YOU like to see Bengston conduct his next experiment?

Let me see if I have this straight. In 1971 (according to Edge Science issue 2) or perhaps later, mice that spontaneously develop mammary adenocarcinoma were injected with murine mammary carcinoma. They were then used in an experiment designed by a sociology student (instructor according to Edge Science) and the chair of the geology department to test the abilities of a healer who ran away (“circumstance had him back out at the last minute”). The sociology student/instructor stepped in to try being the healer, and instead of dying after a maximum of 27 days as expected all the mice lived for two years, control groups included. Control mice that were kept in locations other than the building the treated mice were in died as expected. The results of this experiment were published in 2000. Several other experiments were carried out at various academic institutions at various times, which all vary and/or are unspecified depending on which source you look at.

This raises quite a number of questions in my mind. Firstly, why inject mice that spontaneously develop cancer with cancer? That may be standard practice, it’s not my field, but it seems a bit odd breeding mice to develop a type of cancer that you then induce artificially. Secondly, why choose a sociology student and a geology professor to test if something has an effect on cancer? It is not even remotely close to their fields. Thirdly, why exactly did the healer (who sounds to me like a classic cold-reading con artist going by Bengston’s account in E.S.) run away? Fourthly, according to the literature these mice would develop spontaneous tumors by age 40 weeks and die aged less than a year, yet Bengston’s mice lived for two years? Fifthly, why the long delay in publishing and the discrepancies in when the experiments were carried out, how many of them were there, and where were they carried out? Sixthly, where is the corroboration from other scientists involved? I would especially be interested in the control groups that died as expected, for which we only have Bengston’s word, apparently.

Marg, I know this looks like nit-picking to you, but extraordinary claims have to be put under intense scrutiny and picked at ruthlessly. Only if they survive do they become accepted. I know you would love energy healing to be real, and believe me, so would I, as I have stated before. A whole new field of science and an entirely new and highly effective approach to treating cancer? What’s not to like?

But for me to believe it I need to see much more convincing evidence than Bengston and his mice. There have been other experiments on humans with energy healing of different flavors, and the results have been equivocal at best, closely resembling what I would expect from placebo. Results using hard endpoints, such as death, are all negative as far as I can see. If you can find a well-designed, reasonably large study that found that energy healing extended the life of human cancer patients, do let me know.

I notice an interesting parallel to the un- published- but much recounted- 1970s (?) studies I refer to above:
the PRN woo-meister noted that ALL treated (i.e. prayed upon… oops.. prayed FOR) mice were cured and lived a very long time.
Similarly, subjects in his innumerable ‘health support groups’ ALL do really well. As do ALL of those folks he ‘counsels’ in his daily activities. So far, 70K or 100K ( it varies) of them.

ALL is an interesting word. Nothing probablistic about it. It would suggest something out of the ordinary- not the sort of things one encounters in daily life. If you look at more mundane treatments, e.g. meds for common conditions, I doubt that we’d run into 100% cures or improvements.

I observed, among other things, that some ailments responded very, very quickly to hands-on healing—in particular, cancer. The more aggressive the cancer, the faster it went away. But some ailments didn’t respond well at all, such as chronic benign tumors and warts. Malignant tumors, however, responded right away. This was curious. Also curious was that Bennett couldn’t help anyone with a cancerous tumor who had received conventional treatment. If chemotherapy was going on, people didn’t respond to Bennett. But if no such treatment was going on, the cancer responded very quickly. I watched a few dozen cancer cases go into spontaneous remissions—and as far as we know, not a single one of them ever returned.

If you see a real doctor, you’ll break the magic. And, look, we never heard back from any of them!

I think the problem of non-replicability is partly an issue of the experimenter’s consciousness affecting the outcome.

You think that this is so, but that doesn’t make it true. Before we can arrive at this conclusion, you have to rule out the more likely explanation that the experiments were not conducted properly. I’ve seen absolutely no evidence to rule this out.

I also think this will become a growing problem and eventually the scientific method will have to be re-evaluated.

Curious that Bengston lists his Ph.D. as sociology and criminology. So, let’s see: he’s working as a lifeguard, meets a psychic who didn’t know he was a healer at the time, and recruits him to start treating cancer patients?

@DW
Nobody reads the articles. The first 4 experiments were the ones published in 2000. Only in the first of the four did Bengston act as healer; in others he used skeptical volunteers.

@Narad
Re: magic, I wonder what people in the 15th century would have said to what we take for granted today: the combustion engine, cell phone communication, microwave cooking, GPS navigation, to mention but a few. They would have called it MAGIC. Newtonian physics, relativity, quantum mechanics were all centuries away. No one in the 15th century would have predicted that they were going to be discovered. I wonder what it is that we cannot predict today.

@AdamG
It will be every interesting to see how the science community will deal with the problem.

@Krebiozen
I would like to see more experiments too. I understand what you say about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary proof.

As previously reported, the healing-with-intent experimental protocol required that the volunteer healers practice mental and “directed energy” techniques taught to us by an experienced healer formerly based in Great Neck, New York.

The “experienced healer,” however, had no experience before Bengston “discovered” his “powers” and cultivated him. Then he runs away when scrutiny is on the table and Bengston decides that he’ll play the part instead.

If the healer ( B or a volunteer) was the factor then you subtract that person from being in contact with the C group.

So, all is equal ( both groups of subjects matched; everything else in the vicinity made equal, etc) EXCEPT exposure to a treatment ( i.e. the healer whoever that might be). E has it/ C doesn’t. Easy to do.

Ben said that this just came to him. One day he saw an image of himself with some kind of medical equipment on his head and he knew he was to heal. Ben said that this just came to him. One day he saw an image of himself with some kind of medical equipment on his head and he knew he was to heal.

I understand what you say about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary proof.

Obviously not, because the only evidence that you have for your ‘healing’ is what people you ‘treat’ tell you. That’s the opposite of extraordinary proof.

So Marg, you think that the scientific method needs to be re-evaluated, but have absolutely no idea how it would be evaluated. It won’t be ‘interesting to see how the scientific community deals with the problem because there is no problem. You have this fantasy in your mind that non-replicability is due to experimenter’s ‘consciousness,’ but it’s just that–a fantasy.

Watch this:

I think the problem of non-replicability is partly an issue of invisible, undetectable elves affecting the outcome. I also think this will become a growing problem and eventually the scientific method will have to be re-evaluated.

according to the literature these mice would develop spontaneous tumors by age 40 weeks and die aged less than a year

That was my impression — but continuing my education with the University of Google, I see that the spontaneous tumours to which that mouse strain was prone (at the time) were not particularly lethal. Slow-growing, non-metastatic. So their expected life-span is not clear. I can’t recall whether it was Narad or Krebiozen who went looking for information, without success.

I realise that you truly believe in this BUT if you are familiar with the history of science and even more particularly, alt med, you’d know that we have often been promised results by *psi* folk, alt med or ‘psychical researchers’ for many years:

the 1890s were a period when we were told that there might soon be evidence for spiritual phenomenon and pre-cognition ( Wm James and Freud wrote about this); later on, Jung got involved himself ( astrology and marriage).

In the 1960s and later, culminating in the New Age of the 1990s, we were again told that proof was ‘ just around the corner’. New therapies would be revealed and shown to be superior to SBM.

Bengston ( and others) were ‘investigating’ this a long time ago. Has anything come of it? Research that takes all the confounders into account and eliminates experimenter error? This would be easy to do. Any of the *gentlemen* here, or I, could design an experiment that might test ‘energy healing’. If we were so motivated.
-btw- doesn’t Mr Randi have a challenge?

Bengston has been having a hard time even getting mice for his experiments. The mice always heal, but the ethics review boards say that putting them in Bengston’s experiments would expose them to undue hardship.

Now we are told that he was getting mice well before he even gained his degrees.

It must be a quantum superimposition thing, where the mice are simultaneously available and not available, until you open the book and collapse the state.

Eh, on the one hand it’s a sociologist/criminologist playing at medical experiments, and on the other, it’s some guy with a B.A. in industrial design playing at… well, I wouldn’t exactly call it statistics. Really, they should get together. Just because warts are out, there’s no reason to assume that the Healing Hand (sinister, in Bengston’s case, IIRC) can’t grow it some dong parts. (Thanks for the article.)

You know, there are easier ways to test whether ‘healing’ is caused/ speeded up by a ‘healer':
rather than having mice with a heritable condition, experimenters might provoke a minor, temporary injury to a subject ( animal/ person) and photograph its healing over time: e.g. a mild burn from UV or a chemical ( or a small incision); in one group, a healer would attempt to heal the injury; in the other, a non-healer would be used ( we also might have to consider other controls). The amount of injury/ healing over time ( photos) could be judged by a panel.

Now, this is just a simple alternative that would be more controllable and I’m sure if I spent a little time I could refine it and think of many variants. Healing doesn’t need to be restricted to cancer: if you can heal cancer, why not a sunburn or a minor scrape?
Cutting to the chase: the healers have had lots of time, why haven’t there been many studies and variants?

“[Bernard] Grad studied the Hungarian healer Oskar Estebany’s ability to accelerate the healing rate of
mice with one-half by one-inch wounds. Estebany held the cages of mice twice daily for 15 minutes. The treated group healed significantly more rapidly than the untreated group (Grad, B., Cadoret, R. J., & Paul, G. I. 1961. The influence of an unorthodox method of treatment on wound healing in mice. International Journal of Parapsychology, 3, 5–24.)

And how about Joie Jones’s experiments with pranic healing and cells damaged by gamma radiation? It showed significant treatment effects.

A series of experiments with human wound healing using “derivatives” of energy healing modalities (not clear on what that means) proved inconclusive:

And how about Joie Jones’s experiments with pranic healing and cells damaged by gamma radiation? It showed significant treatment effects.

All treatment effects were clearly caused by invisible healing elves. These elves are actually summoned by very specific hand motions, so it’s understandable that people thought that the hand motions healed through energy. Luckily the mystery has been solved. Sometimes scientific results are not reproducible, so I’ve re-evaulated the scientific method and determined that I’m right.

@AdamG
Joie Jones conducted 520 experiments with gamma radiation damaged cells and pranic healing (Claude Swanson, Life Force: The Scientific Basis) and found significant treatment effects. He also used controls that had predictable mortality rates, and electromagnetic shielding. No elves are mentioned.

From http://www.pranichealing.org/intlmd/Research/Jones%20PHMS%205_06.pdf (note that this is not a mainstream science publication): A new series of experiments involved three people directly: a Pranic Healer, a person that managed the cells, and a third person that observed the process. This third person telephoned a favorite charity during the treatment of the cells and made a donation to this charity using their credit card, willing that any good karma that came to them because of the donation be directed to the cells in culture and to their recovery from the effects of radiation. At this point, 100 such experiments have now been conducted.

Marg, would you like to address the fact that Bengston & Mota made it out as though Mayrick was just some random well-known healer rather than someone who had directly gotten his start in the racket by virtue of Bengston?

Anyway, for more on the lead author of the paywalled item, Daniel P. Wirth, this is kind of curious.

Narad, you are a master of the art of understatement. Wirth is a grifter, and not a very talented one at that. Fraud, embezzlement, fake doctors in healing experiments, social security fraud, identity theft; what a grubby trail he has left behind him. Still, anyone who doesn’t believe his experiments is a blinkered skeptic unable to see the supernatural truth right before their eyes, I suppose. By the way, we have a very nice bridge for sale in London, if anyone’s interested.

A quote from the SciCop article that bears repeating here:

It must be emphasized that, in the entire history of modern science, no claim of any type of supernatural phenomena has ever been replicated under strictly controlled conditions. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated.

@AlisonG
Jones did 400-odd experiments demonstrating definite healing effects before introducing karma into the equation. Why do you discount those?

Richard Bartlett made an interesting comment about research: that in effect re-search means looking for what has already been found. “Experiment” in the true meaning of the word embraces what Joie Jones attempted to do. The word does not mean what YOU think it does, AlisonG.

@Narad
By the time Bengston did the experiments Mayrick was an experienced healer.

@Krebiozen
There appear to be plenty of fraudsters on your side of the fence too. Mark Spector of Cornell is one. Dr. Sheng Weng of Boston University is another. They both did cancer research and happily made up data as they went along.

This is from a link I’ve been trying to post unsuccessfully for two days. Google “cancer studies not replicable” and click on “A fine mess we are in” to see the full posting:

Reported the Wall Street Journal:

At the Mayo Clinic, a decade of cancer research, partly taxpayer-funded, went down the drain when the prestigious Minnesota institution concluded that intriguing data about harnessing the immune system to fight cancer had been fabricated. Seventeen scholarly papers published in nine research journals had to be retracted. A researcher, who protests his innocence, was fired. In another major flameout, 18 research journals have said they are planning to retract a total of 89 published studies by a German anesthesiologist …

Return Mr. Bagley, now going by C. Glenn Bagley, currently listing himself as former head of cancer research at ‘pharmaceutical giant Amgen and now senior vice-president of biotechnology company TetraLogic.,

Together with Lee M. Ellis, a cancer researcher at the University of Texas, he has published a paper in Nature sure to be unpopular with researcher, clinician, and consumer alike.

In “Raise standards for preclinical cancer research” they claim that, after much analysis and combing through studies at Amgen, that of 53 published studies described as ‘landmark,’ only 6 could be successfully replicated.

So an Amgen replication team of about 100 scientists got to work–fast–and, sure enough, they couldn’t confirm the results either. They promptly contacted the authors of the studies–and some researchers kicked in to help attack the problem. They discussed why the results didn’t replicate; some let Amgen borrow materials used in the original studies.

But some had a different approach. Some authors required that the scientists sign a confidentiality agreement that would bar them from disclosing data that contradicted the original findings.

“The world will never know” which 47 studies — many of them highly cited — are apparently wrong, Begley told journalist Sharon Begley [no relation].

Seems like he’s got something of a point there.

Amgen does not stand alone. Bayer Health Care in Germany analyzed its in-house studies–and was singularly unimpressed. In a 2011 paper that wins, in my mind, points for a clever title, “Believe it or not,” they looked at ‘exciting published data’ from their studies. Sadly, all too much of the data could not be reproduced. Soon Bayer had stopped almost 2/3 of its drug projects because experiments couldn’t replicate claims from the literature. A full 70% of those studies were cancer research.

As an additional cause of distress, some of these non-reproducible preclinical papers have taken on a life of their own and are quoted by secondary publications as if their word is law. Says Begley, these studies have “spawned an entire field, with hundreds of secondary publications that expanded on elements of the original observation, but did not actually seek to confirm or falsify its fundamental basis”

I’ve read the nature editorial on repkicability. It’s controversial but well taken. It’s also irrelevant to energy medicine. You cite claims of multiple runs by specific researchers but little or no successful replications by third parties, poor controls and, particularly with Bengston, no follow-up experiments where he tries to refute his critics through isolating the critiqued element.

It appears the only people capable of producing good results using faith/energy healing are those who already believe it works. That might be a clue to something important…

@Marg

This is not faith healing. Bengston has a technique that is not faith based and fMRI experiments that show marked changes in his brain when he performs the technique.

Faith healing. Energy healing. Tomato tomatoe. It stills works via directing thoughts/”waves” doesn’t it? The other thing that makes them interchangeable: neither has been shown to work or exist.

That it doesn’t appear to work with experiments based on consciousness.

Your prejudice is showing. Maybe consciousness doesn’t work at all? Ah, but no: in Marg’s world the conclusion comes first and then the proof.

Maybe I should ask, how would YOU like to see Bengston conduct his next experiment?

By not doing it – and instead having other (non-believing) scientists creating experiments so that people can see whether or not there is confirmation bias going on. Or winning the million from Randi will do nicely.

I wonder what people in the 15th century would have said to what we take for granted today: the combustion engine, cell phone communication, microwave cooking, GPS navigation, to mention but a few.

They’d say: look what science gave us. I’m willing to bet actually that if explained to a scientist and shown the mechanics/theory behind it all, they’d probably think it was scientific and reality-based. Show it to an average crank and they’d think it was magic.

Galileo might not understand the physics behind it, but I’m betting he’d love Hubble telescope and not consider it magic at all.

Hang on to your hats, gentlemen (and lady). The next few decades are going to offer an interesting ride.

Well, there’s an original comment. Let me guess, proof is just around the corner and you’ll be laughing at all of us in X years.

By the way, still no explanation as to why you used the argument from authority?

In “Raise standards for preclinical cancer research” they claim that, after much analysis and combing through studies at Amgen, that of 53 published studies described as ‘landmark,’ only 6 could be successfully replicated.

There appear to be plenty of fraudsters on your side of the fence too. Mark Spector of Cornell is one. Dr. Sheng Weng of Boston University is another. They both did cancer research and happily made up data as they went along.

So, a question: How did the scientific community treat these fraudsters? Did they continue to cite them favorably, like you just did with Wirth, offer them speaking engagements, and generally treat them as martyrs? Or do they retract their papers, fire them, and generally treat them as pariahs?

At the Mayo Clinic, a decade of cancer research, partly taxpayer-funded, went down the drain when the prestigious Minnesota institution concluded that intriguing data about harnessing the immune system to fight cancer had been fabricated. Seventeen scholarly papers published in nine research journals had to be retracted. A researcher, who protests his innocence, was fired. In another major flameout, 18 research journals have said they are planning to retract a total of 89 published studies by a German anesthesiologist …

I think I’ll side with the people that punish fraud, rather than the ones who reward it.

There appear to be plenty of fraudsters on your side of the fence too.

Tu quoque? It’s true, but hopefully, and having worked with more than a few on “our side of the fence” I’m pretty sure of this, they are in a small minority. In the field of paranormal research I’m not so sure. Also I’m not citing research done by a known fraudster. Also, the reproducibility problem is an interesting one that our esteemed host has discussed on several occasions, and rarely has anything to do with deliberate fraud.

Above, Marg engages in something that is achingly familiar to me: as a matter of fact, Mike Adams is doing something similar as well today ( Natural News).

Basically, alt med apologists tally miscreance from research, corporations, media or governements to illustrate that their work *in general* shouldn’t be trusted AND simultaneously suggesting that alt med IS trustworthy.

There is a problem here. First of all, the reason we know about these breaches is because there is regulation and policing – in addition, the adverserial nature of scientific research invokes competition by other scientists who would like to show the error of others’ ways, as well as colleagues would elaborate or expand someone else’s research.

I’ll take anti-vaccine advocates ( because most alt med mavens I survey also fall into that camp as well): they disavow any studies that support vaccination. If the research originates in a corporation, it is obviously tainted; if a university did the study, if was paid off; if a governmental agency or professional association advocates vaccines, their position is deemed to be compromised by connections to pharmaceutical companies; if the media reports that anti-vaccine research is sullied by poor methodology or outright fraud, invective is thrown at the entire industry.

Thus, we’re not to believe professionals, universities, corporations, governments or the media.. so who’s left?
And why woud THEY be trustworthy at all?

Part of their sales campaign involves frightening people about SBM and showing how ‘corrupt’ it is, which is then presented as a public service- a gift- then taking them by the hand and leading them to treatments have have NO data and NO acceptance by anyone. It is based on mis-placed and un-earned trust and emotional manipulation.

Actually, Gary Null claims that his ‘healers’ ( 1970s?) at the *Institute for Applied Biology* healed rats burned by radiation in the cancer ‘research’ going on there; supposedly, he also ‘healed’ rats by feeding them green juices and supplements. HOWEVER ( big however), although this was supposedly rejected by ALL journals, there doesn’t seem to be a paper floating around anywhere.
Maybe someday it’ll appear and we can read it.

Instead of looking for Atlantis or the lost ark, someone should be out there looking for all those promised papers that the government/Big Whatever is hiding. The number of missing papers would probably amount to a mountain’s worth…

So an Amgen replication team of about 100 scientists got to work–fast–and, sure enough, they couldn’t confirm the results either. They promptly contacted the authors of the studies–and some researchers kicked in to help attack the problem. They discussed why the results didn’t replicate; some let Amgen borrow materials used in the original studies.

But some had a different approach. Some authors required that the scientists sign a confidentiality agreement that would bar them from disclosing data that contradicted the original findings.

“The world will never know” which 47 studies — many of them highly cited — are apparently wrong, Begley told journalist Sharon Begley [no relation].

Seems like he’s got something of a point there.

Amgen does not stand alone. Bayer Health Care in Germany analyzed its in-house studies–and was singularly unimpressed. In a 2011 paper that wins, in my mind, points for a clever title, “Believe it or not,” they looked at ‘exciting published data’ from their studies. Sadly, all too much of the data could not be reproduced. Soon Bayer had stopped almost 2/3 of its drug projects because experiments couldn’t replicate claims from the literature. A full 70% of those studies were cancer research.

As an additional cause of distress, some of these non-reproducible preclinical papers have taken on a life of their own and are quoted by secondary publications as if their word is law. Says Begley, these studies have “spawned an entire field, with hundreds of secondary publications that expanded on elements of the original observation, but did not actually seek to confirm or falsify its fundamental basis”

So there are a whole bunch of invalid studies out there, which people will use and quote without any awareness that they are quoting falsehood and hogwash. I am not raising this to suggest that alternative medicine is superior, but to tell you lot to get off those mighty high horses you are sitting on.

No I didn’t, Warg. See the blue text in my previous post? That’s a hyperlink. If you click on it, it will load another page. This page happens to be a discussion of that paper that we had back in April. Orac also linked to it.

So there are a whole bunch of invalid studies out there, which people will use and quote without any awareness that they are quoting falsehood and hogwash.

Maybe, maybe not. Follow the link to see why. Pay particular attention to the definition of non-reproducible used in the paper (hint: Bengston’s research would be considered non-reproducible under that definition), as well as Orac’s example (towards the end of the OP) of a whole branch of cancer research.

What, that people who want mystical healing also want other people to defray their costs, or that a guy who runs an HMO thinks he can pull some of the take on this deal and a Christian Science “practioner and teacher” thinks it sounds like an appealing proposition?

That’s what you’re doing, you know, when you stop trying to provide any evidence for your own assertions and instead try to attack the messenger. You might as well be waving a white flag that says “I give up; I cannot make an adequate case for Bengston and his energy healing, and therefore I will completely switch topics.” Of course, it’s foul that the topic you chose to switch to is a falsehood-filled assault on Stephen Barrett, but you wouldn’t be the Marg we’ve come to know if you didn’t prioritize believing in magical rainbow unicorn farts and their healing properties over the common human decency of not lying.

@Antaeus
It seems to me that, as @Tom Calarco suggests, Orac is following in Barrett’s footsteps. Prior to our discussion of Bengston, there was Orac’s original post. I posted this link as a comment on that post. At least Orac has the wisdom not to attack individuals as Barrett did.

Because I have a few minutes before I must prepare for my other activIties:

it seems to be all the rage to spread falehoods about Dr Barrett- because his critics can’t answer him with data.

ANH is one of my all time faves but I’m surprised that Tim Bolen isn’t being directly quoted.

From my perspective:
first of all, Dr Barrett answers all the various charges and claims succinctly @ Quackwatch- so why don’t his critics link to that? I suppose they wouldn’t want their followers to read what he has to say! About himself or about alt med. And about THEM!
-btw- Gary Null calls him a “quackbuster”: if you google that, you’ll link up to Bolen, not Barrett. It is called ‘Quackwatch’ ( and has other affiliated sites)

Barrett wasn’t a cast out from his profession ( like Struck-off Andy), but retired in good standing. He is an older guy : he and his wife ( also a retired doctor) retired and moved to a warmer area. If you check out his CV, you’ll discover that he had many important positions as a physician- included several at one time- like many physicians do.

He was not considered to be an expert on a woo-ish specialty because he is not a practitioner…

I was interested in Saint Joseph’s College attitude to Dr. Bengston’s work on energy healing and mice, so I wrote to the Professor and Chairman of the Biology Department there explaining that we are discussing his work here and asked what their official line is. I got the following response which I hope he doesn’t mind me reproducing here, since his name and email address are already in the public domain:

Dear [my name redacted to preserve my privacy],
Those experiments were initiated well before I was a part of St. Joseph’s College( >17 years ago). It was my understanding that the department started to work with him in a spirit of collegiality, but his approach did not adhere to the departmental mission and thus they ended any relationship.

The college’s position is that Dr. Bengston works at St. Joseph’s College as a Sociologist and this is an additional interest of his, independent of any institutional role.

Um, quackbuster rhymes with Mythbuster, or Ghostbuster.
The lapsus may be involuntary, but is Mr Null sure it’s a good idea to put his opponent in the the same category as two groups of well-known, sympathetic, successful media figures?
OK, one is fictional, but still. And the real-world one is also about revealing falsehoods.

Marg,
A couple of years ago I had a long and heated argument about Dr. Barrett, which led me to spend a lot of time researching, checking and rechecking many of the various allegations, claims and counterclaims that have been flying back and forth for the past several years. I came to the conclusion that a great deal of the negative stuff written about Dr. Barrett is simply made up to maliciously smear him, and is spread by people who don’t bother to check their facts. The source of a lot of the most venomous material is one Tim Bolen, who charmingly refers to our breast cancer surgeon host here as “the nipple-ripper”. I would advise treating anything you read about Dr. Barrett with the greatest suspicion and check whatever is claimed carefully before linking to it. You might find Dr. Barrett’s account of how he got involved in Quackwatch of interest, as well as some more information about Tim Bolen. I might add that I have never yet found anything on the Quackwatch site to be factually inaccurate, which is more than I can say about Bolen’s drivel, and that many of the legal “triumphs” against Dr. Barrett that are trumpeted on sites like the one you linked to are cases that have been thrown out on technicalities and libel cases that were unproven, not an unusual occurrence in the USA.

Shay,
I learn at least one thing new here every day, and the word “myrmidon” is one of them, despite my supposedly classical education, and my spellchecker smirking at my ignorance by not underlining it. Anyway, I’m sold. I will petition His Most Tentacled Sliminess for a myrmidon forthwith, and should I be appointed one his first order will be to dispose of the henchman, which hopefully he will carry out unquestioningly as advertised (unlike the henchman, who is surly as well as lazy).

Marg, that’s like asking how I know a rant that denies that the Apollo moon landing occurred is “falsehood-filled.” Because when the truth on a subject is easily determined and someone is telling you something different, a falsehood is what it’s called. Stephen Barrett is a retired psychiatrist, not an unlicensed psychiatrist, and the difference is not subtle. Nor would anyone who actually looked at the Koren case and the Rosenthal case call them “virtually identical”; to name just the most obvious difference, Koren was the author of his own defamatory claims about Barrett (including the claim that Barrett was in fact de-licensed, which anyone can easily check for themselves and find is a false claim) while Rosenthal was instead parroting defamatory claims about Barrett that she’d read from others. Rather like you, Marg.

Having quite literally just finished reading the deposition with Bolen/Barrett, it’s quite clear that Bolen was just parroting stuff too. He says he got most of his info from “credible sources” – whether or not he was obfuscating because he was lying or not is another matter, but based on the deposition I’m going to go with what he says… that he simply repeated and re-posted what other people had sent him without bothering to check his facts beforehand.

I doubt Koren actually writes stuff. It sounded very much like he just merges a whole bunch of PR and gossip into a newsletter.

a great deal of the negative stuff written about Dr. Barrett is simply made up to maliciously smear him

I should have added that the rest appears to be distorted or misinterpreted in whatever way suits the author at the time. For example, at times Dr. Barrett is portrayed as a Big Pharma henchman (or perhaps myrmidon), constantly showered with huge checks to persecute poor, brave, maverick, alternative practitioners. At other times he is portrayed as a penniless recluse, running Quackwatch from his basement. Bolen’s website really is a goldmine of unintentionally hilarious material. For example:

The so-called “skeptics” are a misinformation campaign run by angry male homosexuals masquerading as atheists whose management has a significant interest in pedophilia, its promotion and protection.

Who knew?

flip,

I doubt Koren actually writes stuff. It sounded very much like he just merges a whole bunch of PR and gossip into a newsletter.

That seems to be one way they avoid successful libel actions; correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that if you repeat malicious BS believing it to be true, it isn’t libel in the US, it’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

The so-called “skeptics” are a misinformation campaign run by angry male homosexuals masquerading as atheists whose management has a significant interest in pedophilia, its promotion and protection.

I’m very glad that the whole feminism/skeptics debate isn’t at RI: this would cause a rather large outcry from certain people.

As for the repetition of libel, from my limited reading of Barrett’s cases, it would seem that may be the case. I don’t know US law, let alone libel law so I’m just going by what he reported on his site in terms of win/loss of law suits.

Personally I don’t know why suing people for criticising you is a good idea: especially when most of the time us skeptics are complaining about SLAPP suits and chilling effects. I think it cuts both ways and though I have sympathy for Quackwatch and others, it does make it harder for that person’s viewpoint (or facts) to be heard by fence-sitters.

I doubt Koren actually writes stuff. It sounded very much like he just merges a whole bunch of PR and gossip into a newsletter.

That seems to be one way they avoid successful libel actions; correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that if you repeat malicious BS believing it to be true, it isn’t libel in the US, it’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

That’s one of the frustrating things. IANAL and I don’t pretend to understand the Rosenthal case fully, but it was established in court that what Rosenthal was saying about Barrett was damaging falsehood, and that despite Barrett making Rosenthal well aware that the things she was saying were falsehoods, she continued to say them. To me, that seems like it should fulfill the requirement of “malicious disregard for the truth.” Yet the judge decided somehow that Rosenthal’s claims being passed on via the Internet was a factor somehow and meant that she could get away with her defamation.

In any case, this really has no more to do with the original post subject than sociologist Bengston’s “energy healing,” so Marg’s claim that she’s returning to the subject, rather than changing the subject because she can’t defend her claims, is shown to be nonsense.

Helianthus: I believe that Bolen originated the term “quackbusters”, not the other idiot. I think that the latter uses it to mis-direct his followers AWAY from Barrett’s site ( if you google his name, ‘Quackwatch’ is amongst the top entries). He has spent lots of airtime talking up his own ‘education’ and ‘expertise’ to counter Barrett and Wiki ( he can’t sue B- time limits?- and lost a $100 million USD suit against wiki/ also $13 million USD against Lee Phillips for his expose- see Quackwatch). The reason he named his other project ‘PRN’ is probably also mis-direction away from bad press AND to capitalise on actually ‘progressive’ movements in politics and social activism- which he apes when he isn’t shrieking libertarian mottos and calling his country a “police state”. ‘PRN’ is also the name of a legitimate news service. Woos like to copy names of real agencies ( see ‘Whistleblowers’) as well as naming sites to sound official and authoritative ( NVIC).

@ Shay:

I like the term “minion’ myself: it conjures up images of someone slaving away over a hot keyboard dressed in pale lavender Christian Dior undergarments, drinking champagne and eating bons bons… not that I eat bon bons.

Because I survey mis-information disseminators, I can report that energy medicine/ psychology is being championed and applauded as a viable alternative to SBM.
These ideas infiltrate bad science making it even worse.

At random, I just looked over a few sites and found this:
@ PRN, yesterday’s ‘Energy Stew’ show featured Jon Whale ( from Devon) speaking about the Assemblage Point. Jon has a website, Whale Medical Inc, where he hawks his books and sells electronic gem therapy, in which the lamps are filled with gemstones. Jon was “chosen by spirit”.
(The lamps sound like he stole ideas from Ayurvedism’s beliefs about metals and gems as healing)

If you read sites like Age of Autism or TMR, you’ll find that parents often believe that their autistic child has ‘energy issues’ and they might start talking about mitochondria and remediation through supplements.

Other woo-meisters characterise psychological phenomena as being energy based and ultimately fixable through attunement and re-allignment. Laying on of hands is also mentioned for physical and mental illnesses.

Energy is a useful concept for them to toss around because it is insubstantial and perhaps they think of it as being halfway to Spirit , while SBM deals in crass materialim. The energy of which they speak is not what you studied in science classes but something mystical, akin to Qi, Mana, Prana, Libido ( in the Freudian sense), spirit or soul. This slippery use of language allows them to slide right into religion: Mike Adams is up front about it and calls his new site “Divinity Now”.

Personally I don’t know why suing people for criticising you is a good idea:

Personally I agree, I think simply calmly and politely providing the facts and rising above the sort of grubbiness that oozes from the likes of Bolen is the best strategy. I suspect it also annoys them intensely as their lies are designed to provoke a response.

@Krebiozen
Re: your letter from the bioology chair at St. Joseph’s College, the comment that Bengston’s approach did not adhere to the departmental mission and thus they ended any relationship speaks volumes. To me it says “energy healing is not part of the department’s mandate”. But I am sure you’ll have a different take on it. I think it’s very telling that not a single person personally involved with Bengston’s experiments has so far stood up to say that there was something wrong with them. You would think since the man is out there talking about his experiments, someone would.

I think it’s very telling that not a single person personally involved with Bengston’s experiments has so far stood up to say that there was something wrong with them. You would think since the man is out there talking about his experiments, someone would.

It’s easily explained; just like you, they are operating on massive confirmation bias and no matter what they’ve seen and how blatantly wrong it is, they close their eyes to it and claim that the experiments were tremendously meaningful and positive. You only think it’s “very telling” because as meager as it is, “no one has actually yet confessed to willful misconduct” is actually one of the few things that can be put in the plus column for Bengston’s “experiments”; you can’t spot how much it’s damning with faint praise because praise is all you’re listening to and faint praise is the only kind Bengston gets.

I’m having trouble locating a copy of the mission statement of St. Joseph’s Biology Dept. but I somehow doubt it mentions energy healing. That Bengston’s approach did not adhere to the departmental mission and thus they ended any relationship seems to me to be a polite way of saying that Bengston’s methodology was suspect or something else was dodgy. Maybe it was something to do with inadequate randomization, a complete lack of blinding, breaking experimental protocols in every single experiment or something similar.

If Bengston’s results could be replicated under strictly controlled conditions that would be potentially Nobel prize-winning. I don’t think conventional science is as closed-minded as you claim – look at Benveniste, Pons and Fleischmann, Gauquelin and several others whose unconventional research has been published in peer-reviewed journals (though admittedly they mostly haven’t fared too well since).

I’d interpret the chair’s response as a polite way of saying that energy healing is not part of biology. Period.

People who were involved with B’s experiments already have time and effort invested – as well as their ( I presume) good names: do you really think that they will now publicly disparage what they had formerly supported? Perhaps they don’t want to draw attention to themselves and their association with the project.. maybe they are now quietly moving on.

To begin with, I truly wonder about ANY biologist- even in the 1970s or 1980s- not questioning the entire set-up and premise of this research: it is rather far-fetched if you study natural science. Would most scientists be proud of being involved with this?

A point that I have not seen mentioned is that, according to Bengston, energy healing is *easy*.

According to him, he learned it and was able to do it perfectly — absolutely perfectly since he healed the control mice by accident — on the first try. He then taught it to four volunteers who each were able to do it absolutely perfectly on the first try.

They had to be able to do it perfectly on the first try since otherwise there would be some unsuccessful experiments mixed in with the successful ones.

Unless …

You don’t suppose …

There were a bunch of unsuccessful experiments that he neglected to report?

No, can’t be. Mice are hard to come by. Except when they aren’t, of course.

So we can conclude that energy healing is really easy and randomly chosen skeptics can learn to do it perfectly — can learn to do it so well that they heal cancer just by knowing about the patients.

I wonder why we have cancer researchers like Orac when energy healing is so easy. Maybe it only works on mice.

Bengston now travels around, giving weekend seminars where he teaches his energy healing for a few hundred dollars a person. He claims anyone can learn it and it is indeed “easy” once you train with him.

Someone on the reiki for dogs thread claimed that Bengston is doing more good now disseminating his knowledge to the massives (so they can in turn become healers) than he could possibly do if he restricted his activities to doing all the healing himself.

But if it’s that easy, why hasn’t it been properly taught for centuries? Millennia, even? Why do practices like modern medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, German New Medicine, and all the rest even *exist* if the ability to do energy healing is in all of us and its use is easily taught?

No, not perfectly. In the second experiment (I think) 3 of the mice treated by the students died. This is in both his papers about the experiments and in his book.

Personally I think the experiments were weird enough that any biologist worth his or her salt who participated in them (particularly any grad students who were forced to) would retroactively repudiate them if they believed something was amiss. Something along the lines of “I was a grad student, I was made to do it, I saw this and this kind of irregularity, and now as a professional scientist I feel it is my duty to speak out.” To date no one has done any such thing.

Personally I think the experiments were weird enough that any biologist worth his or her salt who participated in them (particularly any grad students who were forced to) would retroactively repudiate them if they believed something was amiss.

Where’s the list of these people, by the way? I presume they kept proper records.

He thinks having a lively conversation with a client during the healing is a fine idea. I have spent years focusing on being present in my sessions which is really just about the opposite of Bengston’s approach. Bengston thinks it is necessary to distract the attention of the healer and the client in order to keep them from interfering in the events on the unconscious level, where he believes the real healing takes place.

Who needs university, grad school, medical school, specializations, internships and years of research and experience when you can learn to heal from Bengston himself in two days for only $295 (and that even includes lunch!)

“Bengston had all the workshop participants charge sterile rolled cotton to use for healing. I had read years ago that cotton, silk and water can be charged with energy and given clients for healing. While everyone was walking around the room charging the cotton I asked to feel his piece of cotton and he generously handed it to me. I may have held it for 45 seconds. Five minutes after I handed it back to him I realized the very significant headache that I had had all weekend from the Colorado altitude was now completely gone. That was really interesting. Really interesting.”

His healing research produced the first successful full cure of mice with transplanted mammary cancer by laying-on-of-hands techniques. His data indicate that mice once cured are cured for life, and are immune to further injections of the cancer. Further, transplanting a piece of tumor that is in the process of remitting into a fully infected mouse will cure that mouse.

Let me get this straight: The one tumor remembers the healing energy and can tell foreign tumor cells to do the opposite of what they’re supposed to? This reminds me of something.

“Five minutes after I handed it back to him I realized the very significant headache that I had had all weekend from the Colorado altitude was now completely gone. That was really interesting. Really interesting.”

I guess I should have noticed this before, but Bengston claims that Mayrick would suffer the symptoms of a person by virtue of handling one of their possessions, say, a watch. Now, in this case, where did the symptoms “go”? There seems to be a problem with the metaphysical plumbing system.

Wow, Hey. Hey, wow. I hadn’t looked at this one for all of 12 hours and it’s full of new amusement. A royal flush? Sufficient to over-run a standard residential septic, I reckon. And I like Narad’s really, really easy comment/link, too. And the complete Quack Miranda.

How does an energy healer like Bengston turn on and off his powers? If he can heal by distance, what range is that distance? Why can’t he simply send out his anti-cancer signal to the entire world and cure everyone at once?

And who’s to say all the people he trains are going to use their super powers for good? Couldn’t an evil energy healer actually give someone cancer? What’s to say everyone taking his courses has good intentions?

I can see a Stephen King novel where someone takes a course like Bengston’s in order to exact revenge on those who wronged him by giving them diseases and messing with their energy.

I’m only partly joking about both these points above. They do raise questions, if you buy into the whole energy healing thing.

And who’s to say all the people he trains are going to use their super powers for good?

This is an interesting question. I think that “promoting the body’s natural healing abilities” and so forth are pretty much out, given that the particle (or particles) that mediates the (anti-) healing force couples to and can be stored by inanimate objects. Moreover, the force seems to be parity-violating on the level of hands. It’s also unclear to me whether the healing effect is wavelike in the sense of some sort of phase cancellation with bad vibrations or particle-like, with cancerons and anticancerons annihilating (which would imply an entire family, since Bengston’s failure to cure warts rather than cancer would directly indicate that there’s an issue with sources and sinks of wartons and antiwartons).

Now are we reading each other’s minds or is there a more parsimonious interpretation of our similar comments?

Since your comment only appeared on my screen when I hit [Submit Comment] but appeared below mine and according to the time stamp it was submitted a whole 10 minutes after mine, it’s definitely something supernatural.

Someone somewhere knows more about Bengston’s experiments; perhaps some of those that Bengston mentions in his Edge Science article:

And mainstream science and medicine has not exactly been supportive. My history of research has generally followed a two-step process. Each new lab expresses disbelief at my data obtained at other labs, and the researchers there take on a “oh yeah, well you couldn’t get those results here” approach. When the mice get cured in the first experiment at any lab, it is usually taken as a gauntlet by lab personnel that they can thwart future positive results. Then, when the second experiment also produces full lifespan cures, it is often followed by head shaking and proclamations to the effect that this is the most amazing thing they have ever seen. But when I suggest further research, there is always some reason that the work cannot continue at that institution. When I suggest that it is my goal to reproduce the remissions without the healing techniques by using either the blood of cured animals or some correlate to the healing, my suggestion is usually met with intense skepticism that such a thing might be possible. I will, nonetheless, persevere.

Are there really actual scientists out there who have witnessed “the most amazing thing they have ever seen” but lack the curiosity to pursue it, despite having all the necessary resources to hand? Or is there another side to this story? I am trying to track some of these people down, but thus far I can only find co-authors and others who clearly buy into the energy healing belief system, such as Dr. Margaret M. Moga.

Personally I think the experiments were weird enough that any biologist worth his or her salt who participated in them

We really have no reason to think this is a large group. How many mathematicians worth their salt would participate in an effort to prove that 2 + 2 = 5? How many physicists worth their salt would participate in an effort to develop a perpetual motion machine?

Marg, would you accept a study that showed cancer patients who received chemotherapy had exactly identical outcomes as cancer pateints who received no treatment at all as proof that chemotherapy was effective at treating cancer?

If not, why do you consider Bengston’s study as proof energy healing is effective, other than by reason of personal appeal?

If a researcher set up a trial just as Bengston did, using two groups of mice where the treatment investigated was a standard chemotherapeutic agent, and just as in Bengston’s case all the mice in both the control and experimental groups survived, would you argue that giving the experimental group mice a chemotherapeutic drus somehow, some way cured the control group mice who received no drug as well?

If not, why do you embrace this explanation for the failure of Bengston’s control group mice to succumb to cancer?

Ok, I’ll only deal with pre-cognition.
More than 100 years ago, Freud dealt with folklore about dreams predicting the future**: he didn’t have to bow to ESP because he knew how people often use information- which is then assembled without conscious knowledge- to arrive at a conclusion or prediction. The solution *incubates* during problem solving- people have studied this- trust me.

I often find myself having strong feelings about how a partcular stock/ bond/ fund will perform- not entirely based on the numbers alone- but on the entire atmosphere of what is happening in economies at that time.

Let’s say I know government A intervened in bank a and goverment B took over bank b: I will therefore make assumptions about a’s and b’s futures that is not entirely based on data that I have now. In the case of a, its price dropped all out of proportion with its value and I made a great deal of money; in the case of b, it affected a friend’s family member’s pay and he left.
I predicted the future well enough to put money into a and speculate that Mr C would be very unhappy about his career.
I doubt that the future reached back and grabbed me.

I can use plain, old COGNITION to explain many events attributed to pre-cognition.

** I’ll put the dream into a modern day scenario: a father dreams that his daughter- who lives far away- will get a divorce: this contradicts what he knows because she calls him and always says how happy she is how great her husband is; he forgets about the dream and learns 6 months later, that she is indeed filing for a divorce.
The man may have recieved subtle cues from his daughter that all was NOT well and dreamt THAT, not what she TOLD him. People can read things in others’ voices and actions that contradict their words and may offer a glimmer of the real story.

Hind-sight is 20-20? There’s nothing there for me to make anything of. No description of methods or results, just a vague assertion that MMI (which isn’t defined) appears more likely to effect past RNGs rather than present or future RNGs. Or something. No useful description provided, just a link to buy the book.

(It’s possible that my 5-minute perusal of the site managed to overlook the information I’d need to be able to make any comment – however, it wasn’t where you’d actually look for said results)

Personally I agree, I think simply calmly and politely providing the facts and rising above the sort of grubbiness that oozes from the likes of Bolen is the best strategy. I suspect it also annoys them intensely as their lies are designed to provoke a response.

I understand the annoyance though and the potential loss of business because of such comments. But from what little I read of Barret’s (oh, I’m never going to remember his spelling right consistently…) time with Bolen, he seems to sue a lot of people and I don’t know why you’d want to go to so much effort when the other people have a perfect opportunity to scream ‘martyr’. Anti-slapp suits are one thing, continuously going after the people you criticise is well, Wakefield-ish.

I’m having trouble locating a copy of the mission statement of St. Joseph’s Biology Dept. but I somehow doubt it mentions energy healing. That Bengston’s approach did not adhere to the departmental mission and thus they ended any relationship seems to me to be a polite way of saying that Bengston’s methodology was suspect or something else was dodgy.

I’ve been wondering… would his energy experiments be outside of what he normally does for the department? I have no idea how these things work, so what I’m wondering is if they discovered that he was doing experiments he’s not paid to do (ie outside of his field) and this caused him problems with the college…?

@Marg

I think it’s very telling that not a single person personally involved with Bengston’s experiments has so far stood up to say that there was something wrong with them.

Wow, you really don’t understand confirmation bias, do you?

A la Denice, today I surveyed a whole bunch of woo via writing requests. I think I facepalmed about 40 times in 20 minutes… sigh… Seems the woomeisters were out in force today.

I’ll ask why they didn’t repeat the experiments using proper randomization, blinding and sticking to the experimental protocol, and eliminating all other possible explanations for the effect Bengston reports. I will also ask why they wouldn’t want to investigate the most amazing thing they have ever seen and go for a Nobel prize. If these results were proved to be replicable under carefully controlled conditions I would join you in asking why we aren’t finding out how this works and curing cancer patients with it right now. I wouldn’t go quite as far as Tim Minchin with his compass, but I would be very surprised.

I’ve been wondering… would his energy experiments be outside of what he normally does for the department?

Bengston is a sociologist who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with the biology department. The whole thing is strange and a bit suspect. That’s why I would like to hear the account of someone else involved in this.

You are dealing with a different animal. Or, if you like, comparing apples and oranges.

When you are testing a substance, you can easily control for delivery. You are either injecting it into the body or making the subject ingest it by means of a pill. So you test active ingredient vs saline, or active ingredient vs sugar pill. Easy. It is clear which experimental subject received what.

How do you control for delivery with energy healing? Bengston can cure mice from 2000 miles away. Qi gong healers have also shown long distance effects too, so he is not alone in this. So how can you know which mice have received the active ingredient, and which not? I suspect this is why Bengston and Moga brought in the geomagnetic probes. Something about the energy healing was making the geomagnetic probes act strange. They acted strange in the same way both in the vicinity of the mice he intended to treat & in the vicinity of the cages where the control mice were kept. So that would seem to suggest that something anomalous was happening in both places.

Until we can control for the delivery of the active ingredient with energy healing, we cannot do controlled experiments on it. If anything, Bengston showed that controlled experiments don’t work with energy healing using our current experimental protocols. Someone mentioned using Faraday cages; but Faraday cages have not worked in shielding subjects from these effects.

I recall a quote from somewhere, and I don’t know the context or remember the speaker/writer, but it says “something unknown is doing we don’t know what”. That seems to apply here. I can see how that would drive humans crazy; particularly humans with a scientific bend.

If anything, Bengston showed that controlled experiments don’t work with energy healing using our current experimental protocols.

This is a conclusion that you draw from Bengston’s work. I, however, look at the same work and conclude that it shows that energy ‘healing’ is not effective. What makes your interpretation more valid than mine?

@AdamG
Valid or not, my conclusion is more interesting and could lead us somewhere. This is how science progresses. You find something curious, and follow it up. What you seem to propose is reductionist science.

Valid or not, my conclusion is more interesting and could lead us somewhere. This is how science progresses.

Marg, this is not how science progresses. When faced with an array of possible interpretations, scientists judge them based on how likely they are to be true. We don’t just pick the one interpretation that we find the most interesting.

Let’s say I flip a coin 1000 times and find that I get heads 70% of the time. Two interpretations of this results are:

a) the coin is not fairly weighted
b) the flipper influenced the result through energy manipulation.

Which is a more likely conclusion? Would you say that (b) is true because you find it more interesting?

I should point out that this is one of the first things you learn as a scientist, and often one of the hardest things to accept.

When you arrive at a result that is entirely unexpected or particularly exciting, the very first thing you try to do is make it go away. You redo your analyses to see if you did everything right. You have colleagues look over the data to see if they are able to spot errors you missed. You do everything you can think of to try and make the result disappear. One of my former advisors was fond of calling this process “Death by Occam.”

Results that survive this process are the ones most likely to be real, the ones most likely to stand up to scrutiny within broader scientific community. Bad science happens when researchers forgo this process, blinded by the excitement of unexpected findings. The arsenic bacteria brouhaha is the latest high-profile example of this.

This is how science progresses.

I’m still shocked that you think this is true. What led you to believe this?

Anyways, I thought you were in favor of ‘re-evaluating’ the scientific method anyways, so why do you even care how science progresses?

You are dealing with a different animal. Or, if you like, comparing apples and oranges.

You mean, I’m comparing fruit to fruit? Where’s the problem?

When you are testing a substance, you can easily control for delivery. You are either injecting it into the body or making the subject ingest it by means of a pill. So you test active ingredient vs saline, or active ingredient vs sugar pill. Easy. It is clear which experimental subject received what.

Yes–you’re conducting a properly controlled experiment.

How do you control for delivery with energy healing?

If it’simpossible to control for delivery of healing energies, it’s impossible to make any claims that that its efficacy has been demonstrated.

Bengston can cure mice from 2000 miles away.

How can he know, when you claim it’s impossible to determine if which if any of the mice actually received any of the purported healing energies Bengston tried to deliver?

Qi gong healers have also shown long distance effects too, so he is not alone in this.

So how can you know which mice have received the active ingredient, and which not? I suspect this is why Bengston and Moga brought in the geomagnetic probes. Something about the energy healing was making the geomagnetic probes act strange.

We don’t know that the ‘energy healing’ caused the result, I’m afraid. In fact, since the probes reacted both near the mice Bengston was waving his hands at and near the the mice he wasn’t waving his hands at, the most reasonable conclusion is that the hand waving had nothing to do with the probes’ reaction.

They acted strange in the same way both in the vicinity of the mice he intended to treat & in the vicinity of the cages where the control mice were kept.

My point exactly–Bengston’s handwaving does not correlate with geomagnetic probes’ reactions.

So that would seem to suggest that something anomalous was happening in both places.

Exactly! Something was happening, not associated with Bengston’s handwaving.

Until we can control for the delivery of the active ingredient with energy healing, we cannot do controlled experiments on it.

And until we can do controlled experiments, we cannot generate evidence it’s effective. Agreed?

If anything, Bengston showed that controlled experiments don’t work with energy healing using our current experimental protocols.

Actually, if anything, Bengston has demonstrated his handwaving had nothing to do with the reaction of the geomagnetic probes.

Someone mentioned using Faraday cages; but Faraday cages have not worked in shielding subjects from these effects.

I mentioned Faraday cages. Ctations needed–what evidence suggests that they would not have worked at shielding the subjects from putative energies associated with healing?

I recall a quote from somewhere, and I don’t know the context or remember the speaker/writer, but it says “something unknown is doing we don’t know what”. That seems to apply here.

Why then have you translated “something unknown is doing we don’t know what” as “Bengston’s handwaving cured both the experimental and control group mice of cancer?

If “scientists” always stuck with what was already known, we wouldn’t have had Galileo, Einstein, Newton. We wouldn’t be flying and we certainly wouldn’t be computing.

Oh, please. I’m not saying that we should stick with what is know, I’m saying that it should take a lot of evidence to convince us of something new Those three individuals had sufficient evidence that there extraordinary ideas were true.

Again, that science produces and validates extraordinary hypotheses is not evidence that all extraordinary hypotheses are true.

Ah, but you have no way of knowing whether his timing just happened to coincide with mine. With no reliable means of detecting the purported energy, there is no reliable means of determining the supposed source. He may have been doing nothing more than waving his hands, and the probes’ behavior may have been the result of some other occurrence. You have no way of confirming that his results are reliable.

The idea that I, rather than Bengston, was the one affecting the probes is just as sound a claim as yours.

Then again, it could’ve been the action of the invisible flying unicorn in my garage, but I can’t be certain, since I can’t see it to be sure what it was doing at the time.

How do you control for delivery with energy healing? Bengston can cure mice from 2000 miles away. Qi gong healers have also shown long distance effects too, so he is not alone in this.
:::snip:::
Until we can control for the delivery of the active ingredient with energy healing, we cannot do controlled experiments on it. If anything, Bengston showed that controlled experiments don’t work with energy healing using our current experimental protocols.

Being as Bengston’s magic healing rays go everywhere, I think it would be cool if he cured every mouse everywhere of cancer. This would get every researcher scratching their heads. If Bengston did this once a day, for, say, 3 months, the whole world would pretty much have to pay attention to him.

Bengston was waving his hands 2000 miles away from both sets of cages.

Which logically argues that his hand waving had nothing to do with the behavior of the geomagnetic probes at either cage-agreed?

The strange effects only happened near the cages of the mice & only at the times when he was healing — and yet had nothing to do with his “hand-waving”?

We don’t know that it only occurred near the cages of the mice, or that it occurred only at the times he was waving his hands, do we? To determine this we would need to monitor geomagnetic probe readings on a much larger scale that Bengston attempted.

But for giggles, assuming that Bengston cound generate “healing energies” detectable 2000 miles way but could not direct it to individual mice–he couldn’t send it only to the experimental group but not to the control group–he broadcast indiscriminately. The inverse square law suggests that at it’s within a mile radius of Bengston the energy would have been 2 to the 2000th power greater and would decline with the square of the increase in distance from Bengston. It’s a wonder that any sick mice remained anywhere in the same hemisphere…

Belief ( a psychological event) can have powerful effects in our lives: it can motivate us to work, act, influence others and achieve (or conversely to slack off and shirk responsibility) – so we believe—work or influence— achieve. If we cut out the middleman we have something like what Marg is invoking: faith ( or belief or thought) ALONE “moving mountains” or healing cancer. No intermediate actions( or only spurious ones, like hand waving) are necessary.

I think that that belongs in the realm of religion not that of science. If there is a force, you should be able to postulate what it is and how it works; it should be measurable. If it is supernatural, how can we who exist in the natural world deal with it? Or, are only the Elect its arbitrators? If anyone can be trained to access it, haven’t we just rendered a hole in the fabric of reality ?
How likely is that?

I think it’s time to start using ultimatum questions in dealing with Marg.

The way this works, Marg, is we ask you a direct question, and if you make three comments on this or any other thread without giving a direct answer to the question, we treat your refusal to answer as an affirmative admission. Sometimes it’s the only way to deal with a person who changes the subject when the going gets tough, as you did trying to change the subject to Stephen Barrett.

If you actually understand science, then you understand the importance of the criterion of falsifiability.

Scientists do not try to find evidence that supports their hypotheses when they conduct experiments; they are instead searching for evidence which would disprove their hypotheses. Why? Because only trying very hard to find such disconfirming evidence and not getting it actually supports a hypothesis, actually gives us reason to think it’s true. If you had to trust your life to one single rope, trusting that it wouldn’t break under your weight, which rope would you trust? A rope that the manufacturers had tried like hell to break, subjecting it to every sort of twisting and knotting they could think of, hauling the heaviest loads with it they could tie up, and that had survived all those tests? Or a rope that had never been tested on anything heavier than a feather? That’s right; you’d choose the rope where the manufacturers had tried like hell to break it and didn’t succeed.

Now suppose someone comes to you with a hypothesis where disconfirming evidence can never be found. “Our special blessed God’s Will Rope,” they say, “never breaks! Except in cases where God Himself has decided, ‘you know, it’s really best for the Divine Plan if this rope breaks.’ But if God isn’t 100% consciously deciding that the rope will break, then by golly, it’ll hold!” What happens if that hypothesis – that the rope never breaks unless God wills it – is false, and someone puts it to the test? One of two things: the rope holds, and believers in the God’s Will Rope say “see! our hypothesis is right: except when God wills it, the rope will always hold!” Or, the rope breaks, and believers say, “Obviously, the rope holds unless God Himself wills it to break! Obviously, He willed it so just now!” No matter what the evidence is, no matter how false the hypothesis is, the evidence can’t show the falsity of the hypothesis. Such a hypothesis is not falsifiable. Just as you would not trust your weight to a rope which has never been tested on anything heavier than a feather, you would not stake anything important on a hypothesis which has never received real testing because it’s unfalsifiable and all tests say “Yes” regardless of what the true answer is.

Now that you understand the concept of falsifiability, Marg, answer yes or no: isn’t it a fact that energy healing as you claim it to exist is not falsifiable? If there’s no way to tell whether some healer within a 2000 mile radius is or isn’t trying to heal some subject, and if “consciousness” can interfere with that healing but again, there’s no way of telling whether it is or isn’t interfering – then any result you get can be explained in terms of “healing intent” working or “consciousness” interfering, even if that’s a completely wrong answer.

“Let’s say I flip a coin 1000 times and find that I get heads 70% of the time. Two interpretations of this results are:

a) the coin is not fairly weighted
b) the flipper influenced the result through energy manipulation.

Which is a more likely conclusion? Would you say that (b) is true because you find it more interesting?”

And if the coin behaves the same way for another flipper, does that confirm that the coin is biased, or is it (Oh My God!) evidence that the first flipper’s powers work on the coin even when someone else is flipping the coin.

I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the coin was weighted, but I would certainly try it for myself.

@Antaeus
Thank you for the illustration of falsifiability. I learned two new things today. The other was that “Lithoclastic cystotomy is attributed to Ammonius Lithotomos (stone-cutter) of Alexandria, Egypt,” who lived ca 296 BC. Who knew?

@JGC @Lawrence
It’s not that indiscriminate. Only mice within the scope of the experiment were affected.

Following Antaeus’ lead:
How could we make falsifiable hypotheses about energy healing?
First, we’d have to stipulate *what* kind of energy we’re dealing with and how it could be measured- rather than the amorphous *energy* B. talks about- perhaps even what might *block* it? Where does it come from?
Waves? Particles? Heat? Light? Dark matter?

In other tales of energy healing, I’ve heard about something that sounds like Qi;
then we’re told about ‘interference’ by consciousness and it affecting ‘geomagnetic probes': so what type of energy could do either/ both?

Popper stressed that unfalsifiable statements are important in science.[5] Contrary to intuition, unfalsifiable statements can be embedded in – and deductively entailed by – falsifiable theories. For example, while “all men are mortal” is unfalsifiable, it is a logical consequence of the falsifiable theory that “every man dies before he reaches the age of 150 years”.[6] Similarly, the ancient metaphysical and unfalsifiable idea of the existence of atoms has led to corresponding falsifiable modern theories. Popper invented the notion of metaphysical research programs to name such unfalsifiable ideas.[7] In contrast to Positivism, which held that statements are meaningless if they cannot be verified or falsified, Popper claimed that falsifiability is merely a special case of the more general notion of criticizability, even though he admitted that empirical refutation is one of the most effective methods by which theories can be criticized. Criticizability, in contrast to falsifiability, and thus rationality, may be comprehensive (i.e., have no logical limits), though this claim is controversial even among proponents of Popper’s philosophy and critical rationalism.

Popper stated that “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program — a possible framework for testable scientific theories” and also called all scientific theories conjectures, even the ones that had been successfully tested.

And this:

Thomas Kuhn’s influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued that scientists work in a series of paradigms, and that falsificationist methodologies would make science impossible:

No theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a given time; nor are the solutions already achieved often perfect. On the contrary, it is just the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit that, at any given time, define many of the puzzles that characterize normal science. If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories ought to be rejected at all times. On the other hand, if only severe failure to fit justifies theory rejection, then the Popperians will require some criterion of ‘improbability’ or of ‘degree of falsification.’ In developing one they will almost certainly encounter the same network of difficulties that has haunted the advocates of the various probabilistic verification theories [that the evaluative theory cannot itself be legitimated without appeal to another evaluative theory, leading to regress][38]

IMHO energy healing fits comfortably within a metaphysical research program.

First, we’d have to stipulate *what* kind of energy we’re dealing with

You’ve just conceded the entire shebang. The core occultist concept is that energy is “stuff” that will do one’s bidding rather than a property. It has nothing at all to do with the meaning of the word in physics.

The acronym ELF gets bandied about (and is mentioned as a reason for Faraday cages not working to shield the energy).

Bengston has suggested that it may not even be energy, but information that bypasses the conscious mind. In his talks he describes an experiment he was in, in which he had his head stuck in an fMRI while technicians placed envelopes in his hand which randomly contained either nothing or hair from sick animals. He had no conscious way of knowing which envelope was which, but when he held envelopes with hair from sick animals, his brain, quote unquote, lit up like a Christmas tree. So he theorizes that it is the sickness, or the sick individual, that initiates the healing response from the so-called healer, in the presence of a healing intent I presume. If the second of those is true, and it is the sick individual that initiates the healing response, then it is also possible for a sick individual to negate the healing intent by blocking the healing response.

Brainwaves somehow seem to be involved, because all the healers that have been tested had unusual brainwave patterns and in several studies, not only with Bengston but also others, a synchronization of the brainwave patterns of healer and patient were observed. So one possibility that comes up is that healing can occur in certain ranges that people don’t as a rule experience, and the healer takes the “healee” there through brainwave synchronization. That’s a hypothesis that can be tested.

So one possibility that comes up is that healing can occur in certain ranges that people don’t as a rule experience, and the healer takes the “healee” there through brainwave synchronization. That’s a hypothesis that can be tested.

This, not being responsive, is a concession that what you are plumping for is indeed not falsifiable.

Marg: It’s not that indiscriminate. Only mice within the scope of the experiment were affected.
How do you know? Were checks made on all other mice with tumours that could possibly have been affected? No? Then you don’t know if it’s indiscriminate or not.

Also, (Marg again, quoting Popper) Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program — a possible framework for testable scientific theories
It’s rare these days to see someone use ‘Darwinism’ as a substitute for ‘evolutionary theory’, unless in the pejorative sense… But anyway – my colleagues in evolutionary biology would be surprised that they are working in a field that isn’t ‘testable’, since they spend a fair amount of their time devising & performing research intended to do just that.

This Popper/Kuhn stuff sounds pompous & vacuous, certainly in the current context.

Marg grossly misinterprets Kuhn. The point that he makes with respect to Popper has to do with falsification of the current paradigm. I don’t know whether she actually understands the sleight of hand involved.

And, finally, I’d note that by playing the card that Faraday cages don’t block slowly varying magnetic fields to imply a property of the magic energy du jour, one is implicitly asserting that Bengston’s left hand is a magnetic monopole.

I have a few thoughts on ‘healing energy’, for what they are worth. The concept of a life force or energy is a common one in many different ages and cultures for example qi, prana, ka, orgone, reiki and vril energy.

Sometimes we are told it is some sort of electromagnetic energy that is generated by and sensed by our bodies. At other times we are told that it can pass unhindered through a Faraday cage, so it cannot be electromagnetic (unless it is of a very low wavelength indeed). Qi gong healers’ hands supposedly emit low frequency sound waves that are responsible for healing.

Some claim that whatever this healing energy is, it acts instantaneously and distance makes no difference, which exclude all forms of energy known to science. Others claim it isn’t energy transmission at all, but resonance, like two tuning forks becoming synchronized. Some suggest that healers remove bad energy from the patient (rather than transmitting healing energy to the patient) and experience the same symptoms as the patient as they heal them (just like Star Trek’s ‘The Empath’ back in 1968).

Pranas can be accumulated by breathing exercises i.e. pranayama, but there appears to be no Hindu tradition of transmitting them to heal others; please correct me if I’m wrong, but Pranic healing appears to be a modern invention.

Orgone for some reason accumulates in containers with walls made of alternating layers of organic material and metal, or is generated by bits of metal and crystal embedded in resin (depending on who you believe).

I could go on, but I think I have made the point that there is very little if any agreement about any of the properties or even the existence of this putative energy. I think that’s because it’s a metaphor that has been taken literally.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend “magic” with such vehemence…..this guy may be doing something that may have some effect, but we’ll never be able to tell what, when, where or why, we should just accept, outside of all other rational explanations, that his healing powers are real……wow….and Marg, if you believe that, I have a bridge I need to sell you.

Thanks, that’s what I thought. It seems unlikely that the college would actually have anything to do with his experiments, then.

The concept of a life force or energy is a common one in many different ages and cultures for example qi, prana, ka, orgone, reiki and vril energy.

Isn’t this just a god of the gaps: we didn’t know what thunder was so attributed it to a god. We don’t know why some things are alive and some aren’t, so we attribute it to some unseen mystical ‘force’. Or, if you’re into it… dead aliens who mess with your health.

@Marg

As someone who actually tried Qi gong…. bullshit. The only thing it healed was my ability to have money after walking out of the session. (We could say maybe they just weren’t doing it right, but according to them they were trained by the Chinese master of this particular style of Qi gong and were ‘second generation’ masters. Maybe they’re all doing it wrong)

If “scientists” always stuck with what was already known, we wouldn’t have had Galileo, Einstein, Newton. We wouldn’t be flying and we certainly wouldn’t be computing.

Oh blah – the Galileo card now. Can’t you at least come up with new wrongness?

He had no conscious way of knowing which envelope was which, but when he held envelopes with hair from sick animals, his brain, quote unquote, lit up like a Christmas tree.

Oh for [expletive deleted]. An empty envelope feels completely different to one that has something in it. How much hair are we talking, because I’m betting it wasn’t a single strand but more like a tuft.

PS. Define “information”.

Marg is actually a perfect example of what happens when people count the misses as hits. And also, jelly not sticking to a wall.

He had no conscious way of knowing which envelope was which, but when he held envelopes with hair from sick animals, his brain, quote unquote, lit up like a Christmas tree.

Oh for [expletive deleted]. An empty envelope feels completely different to one that has something in it. How much hair are we talking, because I’m betting it wasn’t a single strand but more like a tuft.

PS. Define “information”.

Marg is actually a perfect example of what happens when people count the misses as hits. And also, jelly not sticking to a wall.

So Marg, by refusing to answer a direct question, has acknowledged that energy healing is unfalsifiable.

However, she tries to salvage her position by turning to a very strict interpretation of “falsifiability”, whereby those paying attention to the criterion of falsifiability are ready to reject any hypothesis as unfalsifiable if it cannot immediately yield 100% black and white answers. In Marg’s mind, all attempts to pay attention to falsifiability automatically constitute the sort of “falsificationist methodologies [that] would make science impossible”.

This is, needless to say, a straw man. Marg, if you say “we shouldn’t value falsifiability; we should be valuing some criterion which lets us entertain unfalsifiable ideas as possibly true while looking for falsifiable consequences of those ideas that we could then compare to the evidence to see if the evidence supports them,” you’re talking about falsifiability as everyone else talks about it.

But you aren’t practicing it. You aren’t entertaining the hypothesis that energy healing is possible; you’re stating it to be fact. You’re not looking for falsifiable consequences of the hypothesis, so that we can test the hypothesis against the evidence; you’re trying to trumpet useless “experiments” where any result that was obtained would have been interpreted as confirmation as somehow providing strong evidence.

Just as you did in the “reiki for dogs” thread when you tried to turn “I know one thing more than you do, which is that I don’t know anything” into “I know more than you do so I’m more likely to be right about energy healing,” you’re grabbing onto a premise and trying to take advantage of its positive implications while blithely ignoring any responsibilities or negative implications that come with it.

You claim that “Darwinism,” i.e. evolutionary theory, is unfalsifiable. Yet Darwin himself in Origin of Species offered an example of falsifying his hypothesis: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Believers in “intelligent design” have invested countless hours and millions of dollars in trying to find just such an “irreducibly complex” organ, and failed. The continuing failure of highly motivated people to falsify evolutionary development of such organs is strong evidence that it is not false.

By contrast, what significance does it have that Bengston did ten “experiments” where no possible results would have been accepted as even casting doubt on the hypothesis, let alone causing it to “absolutely break down”? Not a gnat’s fart.

The Salem witch trials were horrific and cruel and wrong-headed, but they were more scientific than Bengston’s experiments. The villagers said, “Hold her under the water; if she drowns, then she’ll be dead but our premise that she’s a witch will be falsified!” By contrast, Bengston’s experiments only lead to one common result: “Buy my DVD!”

Some claim that whatever this healing energy is, it acts instantaneously and distance makes no difference, which exclude all forms of energy known to science.

This in particular can be said more strongly. Such an interaction would break causality, upon which ALL science depends. The prior probability of such an effect is many, many orders of magnitude smaller even than homeopathy.

A long time ago, Jung wrote an essay about “psychic energy” ( not referring to ESP but to *mind*) in which he surveys pre-scientific concepts like Qi, Prana et al *vis a vis* more modern concepts in physics and biology ( for his day). He speculated that perhaps in the future, we’d bridge the gap. Well, he died over 50 years ago and so far…

People, regardless of what era they live in, all experience personal energy ( for want of a better term): you work hard at a task, pay attention, focus, feel strength, effort, intention, will, fierce emotion, pain…there are speciifc sensations associated with these feeling states. Some individuals seem ‘powerful’ by reason of their abilities, achievements or personality. Earlier cultures created a system of beliefs about what they experienced, some of which was codified into their theories of magic- what Frazer wrote about- and Qi, Mana, Prana et al.

More recently SBM has delved deeply into the secrets of physiology: so we no longer have to rely upon pre-scientific notions to explain what happens when a person thinks or has a seizure or is dreaming. So the gaps between our personal experience and knowledge of physiology become smaller and smaller with each passing decade.

When I listen to a person** speculate about energy and its relation to mental processes, health or healing, I realise that gaps are not equal in all people. Mitochondria are not Qi factories and healers don’t transmit neurological potentials from their fingertips.. if they did, we’d have already found it.

I think that’s an important point that tends to get lost in these discussion. After centuries of people trying to obtain cures using it, if energy healing were effective we simply wouldn’t be having this discussion: there would be actual hard evidence it works and its basic operating principles would have been worked out.

Sure. That’s exactly why I brought up (on this thread) James, Freud and Jung ( altho’ I’m only a big fan of Wm)- they were pioneers in psychology/ physiology who lived a very long time ago and even though we’ve witnessed monumental advances in these areas AND in technology since any of them were alive…
still no dice.

@Antaeus
Perhaps you should be having this debate with Bengston. His contact info is available on the internet and he relishes debating skeptics. However, the stance that the stuff is impossible, and the man a charlatan that one hopes to see debunked, is not skepticism by any definition of the word.

@Antaeus
And further, how long did it take to show that Darwin’s theory was falisifiable? Newton’s? Einstein’s? Were they falsifiable on the spot, or did we have to evolve a bit more scientifically before they could be tested?

And further, how long did it take to show that Darwin’s theory was falisifiable? Newton’s? Einstein’s?

If you’d ever actually read the writings of any of these three scientists, Marg, you’d know that all 3 describe in detail experiments that could falsify their theories, or, in the case of Darwin, describe in detail exactly what evidence would falsify his claims.

All you have to do to show that a theory is falsifiable is to propose a hyopthetical experiment, and its hypothetical results, that would convince you your hypothesis is false. Can you propose such an experiment?

Were they falsifiable on the spot, or did we have to evolve a bit more scientifically before they could be tested?

You still misunderstand. Einstein’s theories were falsifiable from the get-go because he proposed experiments from the start that would validate or invalidate his hypotheses. That these experiments couldn’t be conducted at the time says nothing about the falsifiability of his claims.

If you can’t come up with an experiment that could produce a result that falsifies your hypothesis, what you have is not a scientific hypothesis but merely conjecture.

It took no time to show that evolutionary theory was falsifiable, since as stated it identified observations sufficient to require comprehensive revision or outright abandonment, such as the identification of organisms which violated a nested hierarchy of species (fish with lobed teeth, non-vascular plants bearing seeds or flowers, etc.)

I would like to point out that between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC humanity seems to have made a jump in consciousness that gave us Homer, Socrates, Plato, the Old Testament, the Buddha, Confucianism etc.

An argument has been made that Newton, Freud, and Einstein were part of a second such leap, and that we are currently experiencing another. From what I see the current leap of consciousness includes a growing interest in and a growing ability to do energy healing. Just because we have not been able to do it effectively in the past does not mean that we are not heading in a direction that will lead us to do it effectively in the future, and that there are not individuals in existence who can do it now.

However, the stance that the stuff is impossible, and the man a charlatan that one hopes to see debunked, is not skepticism by any definition of the word.

The stance that you have offered no actual evidence energy healing is effective, and that Bengston’s experiments where all controls failed does not constitute such evidence, is simply to acknowledge the facts.

You know, I was just about to sit back, have a drink, do my nails ( pale almond is such a lovely shade) and observe the thread,
BUT..
you leave me no choice but to respond:

when you say,”large parts”…
could you be a little more specific?..was B. himself so vague?
the brain has many, many parts which are active ( lit?) simultaneously, most of the time. It is complex beyond your wildest imaginings.. it is not a few notes, it is symphonic multiplied and synchronised, a computer complicated and alive.

I almost don’t know where to begin
BUT “large parts” is a rather meaningless statement, it’s like if a person asked me what I did and I said, “move around”. Well, I do!

If there is a theory of WHAT it is exactly that emanates from a person who heals another creature, it should delineate where it originates and what it is ( type of energy; electrical, chemical, mechanical).. is it somehow emotional? that would implicate certain regions.. if it is ‘thought’, other places. Perhaps it is some sort of global, Gestalt-ising, over-arching judgmental process.. guess what? that has a specific locus as well. Maybe it has something to do with visualisation… also locii for that.. earlier I spoke about sarcasm, believe it for not, there’s a place a for that too.. ad infinitum, almost.

I have to take a break before I address the James quote and about 900 other issues…

Just because we have not been able to do it effectively in the past does not mean that we are not heading in a direction that will lead us to do it effectively in the future, and that there are not individuals in existence who can do it now.

How can you demonstrate that there are individuals in existence who can heal with energy if there is not an experimental result that could falsify this claim?

Just because we have not been able to do it effectively in the past does not mean that we are not heading in a direction that will lead us to do it effectively in the future, and that there are not individuals in existence who can do it now.

How can you demonstrate that there are individuals in existence who can heal with energy if there is not an experimental result that could falsify this claim?

There’s no need. That’s what the “metaphysical” half is for. Marg has finally devolved into the Age of Aquarius gambit, in which the historical events she points to come from somewhere else and have returned to dole out “powers.” Naturally, not everyone has the keen senses to detect the sea change that is underfoot, which makes the sensitives a form of elect.

The statement “there are individuals in existence who can do energy healing” is not falsifiable.

See the following:

‘The concept [of falsifiability] was made popular by Karl Popper, who, in his philosophical criticism of the popular positivist view of the scientific method, concluded that a hypothesis, proposition, or theory talks about the observable only if it is falsifiable. “Falsifiable” is often taken to loosely mean “testable.” A common application or usage put loosely is if it’s not falsifiable, then it’s not scientific. For example, the assertion “ghosts exist” is not falsifiable since nothing could possibly prove that ghosts do not exist. But the state of being falsifiable or scientific says nothing about its truth, soundness or validity, for example the unfalsifiable statement “That sunset is beautiful.”‘

Q.E.D. You’re just a rank occultist, Marg. Why not drag out the Eight Circuits of Consciousness while you’re at it? It’s just around the corner for someone anointed with the Special Resonant Frequencies.

The evolutionary function of the sixth circuit is to enable us to communicate at Einsteinian relativities and neuro-electric accelerations, not using third circuit laryngeal-manual symbols but directly via feedback, telepathy and computer link-up. Neuro-electric signals will increasingly replace “speech” (hominid grunts) after space migration.

The statement “there are individuals in existence who can do energy healing” is not falsifiable.

Sure it is, because it’s predicated on the premise “energy healing exists.” I view this claim as falsifiable. Do you?

Similarly, the statement “There are individuals in existence who can communicate with plants” is falsifiable because it is a claim predicated on the falsifiable claim that communication with plants is possible.

For example, the assertion “ghosts exist” is not falsifiable since nothing could possibly prove that ghosts do not exist.

Utter nonsense. Assuming they mean the assertion “ghosts, the spirits of deceased humans, exist as entities that are detectable in the natural world,” this is completely falsifiable. That deceased humans have spirits is a falsifiable claim. That humans have ever detected such entities is a falsifiable claim.

No, the problem is that energy healing as you’ve presented it is not falsifiable. Bengston’s work is more than enough to falsify energy healing for me, but apparently not for you. Why do you care anyways? You want to re-evaluate the whole scientific method anyways. Why bother to couch your conjectures in the robes of science if you think science is useless anyways?

I would like to point out that between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC humanity seems to have made a jump in consciousness that gave us Homer, Socrates, Plato, the Old Testament, the Buddha, Confucianism etc.

Quoting a single philosopher does not make it so. (Not even if he’s supported by a religious historian – which I shall take to mean, an historian of religion, since her personal faith needn’t come into it.)

Also, From what I see the current leap of consciousness includes a growing interest in and a growing ability to do energy healing.

Evidence, please. People saying they can do ‘energy healing’ is not evidence that they can do any such thing.

Marg, what are you talking about? A.F. and I are in total agreement. From his comment:

By contrast, what significance does it have that Bengston did ten “experiments” where no possible results would have been accepted as even casting doubt on the hypothesis, let alone causing it to “absolutely break down”?

This is exactly what I’m saying. Why bother to promote Bengston’s ‘studies’ if no possible result could have cast doubt on the hypothesis? You can dress up magic to look like science but it’s still just magic.

@Antaeus
Perhaps you should be having this debate with Bengston. His contact info is available on the internet and he relishes debating skeptics.

Oh! Excuse me, Dr. Bengston! I didn’t realize that was actually you, posting here under the pseudonym “Marg”! If I’d known that, well, actually, I’m not sure what I would have done differently, but … what? what’s that? You mean “Marg” is after all a separate person from Bengston? And Marg is the person who made the choice to start a debate here in which she thought Bengston’s experiments were the trump card? And she would have been completely happy to accept the results of the debate if she’d succeeded in convincing people? Well, then, it’s pretty damn rude of Marg to be saying in effect “I only have time for you if you’re going to agree with me; if you’re going to disagree you should go do it elsewhere.”

However, the stance that the stuff is impossible, and the man a charlatan that one hopes to see debunked, is not skepticism by any definition of the word.

You trying to lecture people about skepticism is like Idi Amin lecturing about human rights. If the choice is between “energy healing is impossible” and “energy healing is extraordinarily improbable, since people have believed in it and tried to make it work for millennia and yet even though it’s supposedly as easy as just having a healing intent no one can actually demonstrate it making a difference,” then the latter is closer to the ideal of skepticism. But “energy healing is real and it’s going to be the new paradigm and if the scientific method can’t find any proof it means the scientific method is outdated” is not even in the running.

And further, how long did it take to show that Darwin’s theory was falisifiable?

Not long at all, since as already pointed out to you Darwin in the same volume where he proposed his hypothesis of evolution through natural selection said “Hey, here’s some evidence that, if anyone finds it, pretty much destroys my theory.” That showed right away that the hypothesis was falsifiable.

Just because we have not been able to do it effectively in the past does not mean that we are not heading in a direction that will lead us to do it effectively in the future, and that there are not individuals in existence who can do it now.

There isn’t an “it” in the world that doesn’t apply to. Seriously, let’s substitute “lay golden eggs” in there. “Just because we didn’t know in the past how to lay golden eggs doesn’t mean we won’t learn in the future how to lay golden eggs, or that there aren’t individuals now who can lay golden eggs!” That’s true, we do not have (and probably never could have) absolute 100% irrefutable proof that it is impossible to lay golden eggs, but where is the evidence that it is possible?? Neither Bengston’s experiments which showed no difference between the experimental and control groups nor your fanatic faith in those experiments constitutes very convincing evidence.

But the state of being falsifiable or scientific says nothing about its truth, soundness or validity, for example the unfalsifiable statement “That sunset is beautiful.”‘

See, this is why I left Wikipedia: that sort of meaningless crap gets added to articles by editors who don’t actually understand the subject they’re writing about, and then it gets quoted by cretins who just want to win arguments and don’t care that they’re appealing to the authority of completely unknown strangers.

“That sunset is beautiful” is an aesthetic judgment; it is not only not falsifiable, it has no objective component that exists independent of an observer; it cannot be true or false. It has nothing to do with a claim like “certain individuals can exert a healing effect by simply willing it”; that is a claim about an objective state of affairs. If such individuals exist, the claim is objectively true; if such individuals do not exist, the claim is objectively false. Anyone who thinks that nothing is said about the truth of an objective claim by the fact that it is not falsifiable probably also thinks a rope which has never once been tested by the manufacturer is just as good as a rope which has undergone 100,000 hours of testing.

I personally have trouble with comprehending what people mean when they say “consciousness”- which I treat as an individual rather than a societal or cultural pheneomenon.

James was probably talking about consciousness developing as an adaption- selected because it was an advantage as species evolved. It loaded the dice. It helped.

It has been assumed in popular views, that the so-called unconscious is either a seething mass of instinctual aggression and sexuality ( the id) or the secret font of creativity, artistry and religio-mystical inspiration forever poised on the brink of a golden dawning of awareness.

I think of it as what is unverbalised or unverbalisable: what is below awareness, that which rules actions that are automatised and can proceed without verbal guidance and our past – lost because of constantl shifting updates. What we’ve forgotten. Feelings and instincts that need no words.

If we are on the brink of a New Age, I doubt that it’ll be one of spirituality, distance healing and faery dust: more likely a golden age of technology. Perhaps the last 40 years or so- with constant searches for harbingers of a new Golden Age of wisdom and spiritual values- belies a human reaction provoked by fear of technology and progress.

While Marg flounces about and jokingly proposes marriage, let’s not forget that she is still an utter fraud who’s taken what’s likely to be a decent sum of money from innocent people with her claims that her hand-waving improved their health.

Did you cite Bengston’s studies to those folks, Marg? What would they say if you told them you didn’t think energy healing could ever be proven to be real? I’d want my money back.

Perhaps you should learn not to mention something unless you have actual physical evidence to back up your assertion.

Why do we not use argument from authority? Because believing what a person says is not evidence.

Just because we have not been able to do it effectively in the past does not mean that we are not heading in a direction that will lead us to do it effectively in the future, and that there are not individuals in existence who can do it now.

Like this, again stated as an assertion with no evidence.

Bengston has far more information than anything I can offer second-hand.

Then why bother offering second-hand info in the first place? Or, more to the point, why bother coming to argue here if you have no evidence to back it up?

I find it interesting that she harps on about ‘large parts of the brain’ but doesn’t deal with my point about how much fur was in an envelope. A fairly basic children’s game is to get them to close their eyes and experience things with other senses – like touch. I’m willing to bet a five year old can tell the difference between an empty envelope and one full of fur… unless it was a single strand of fur or such a small amount. Can Marg respond to this? Probably just as well as she has in regards to how much of the brain was lit up…

Like Marg’s worldview, she is very hand-wavy and details don’t seem to matter.

Have you considered that we may be evolving?

Ah, we’ve now moved into ‘sci fi = doco’ territory. This should be some kind of logical fallacy…

And she’s pushed the “different ways of knowing” fallacy repeatedly.

@Antaeus
Will you marry me? Provided that you are a man, of course…

Well, it looks like she really has nothing left of value to offer…

@AdamG

Why bother to couch your conjectures in the robes of science if you think science is useless anyways?

Because on some level I think she recognises that if it were given the appearance of scientific, then it would be accepted by a larger number of people.

@AdamG
Many people I treat for free; some I treat by donation. The donation is voluntary; no one has to pay it. People pay it willingly. If they ask how much, I tell them an amount but also add that it is up to them. I’ve had people give me more; I’ve had people give me less.

The pattern seems to be that after the first treatment change lasts a few hours to a few days; after the second treatment it lasts longer, a week or two; after the third or the fourth it can be lasting. It can also plateau, as for instance with torn knee ligaments. From experience I can tell you that when people work with physiotherapists they are willing to have a dozen or so treatments with gradual improvement before they give up. So they are willing to pay physiotherapists up to a point even if it doesn’t help — but they would not be willing to pay me.

BTW I meant to ask you, @AdamG, how many people ask for their money back after the chemotherapy they received, shown in laboratory studies to shrink tumors by X per cent and give, say, a median survival of 4 extra months, turns out not to work on them? And if not, why not?

@Flip
The marriage proposal was a joke. I have a soft spot for highly intelligent and erudite men.

Re: hairs. Bengston says even one strand is sufficient, so I doubt the envelopes were stuffed full of hair. Plus, I doubt that mice have that much hair to begin with. Take a few hairs from a mouse, @Flip, put them in envelopes, and see if you can tell apart the ones that have hair and the ones that don’t just by randomly holding them.

This target couldn't be painted any bigger. It's already the size of a galaxy

September 12, 2012

@Marg

Dear I won’t be doing experiments with envelopes. Not until you provide factual evidence of what Bengston actually did himself – your assertions of hearing it during his talks are not examples of documentation of his methodology.

Once again, you show an inability to ignore argument from authority. If Bengston said it, it must be true.

Hey, wanna meet Angelina Jolie – she and I are best friends and she taught me all about how the sky is red.

You two need an introduction to Randi and his million dollars.

As for the marriage proposal: I got that it was a joke. My point was that you have so little evidence to provide that you have nothing left *but to make jokes*.

I propose another way to look at the issue of ‘healing’ ( including reiki, prayer, energy healing etc):
it is not a SB ( data supported) medical intervention, it is instead an expression of faith and religious in nature.
It is not very different from a person recieving visits from a minister, rabbi, imam et al who might pray for or along with them. Many religious/ cultural groups believe in faith healing and prayer, including laying-on-of-hands, chakra balancing, Qi adjustments.

I am an atheist from a largely atheistic/ agnostic family but I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with people believing in faith-based interventions alongside SBM. I would worry if it was used to REPLACE SBM or if it was called ‘evidence-based’. I have heard the latter from an accomplished healer and woo-meister.

Religious practice may provide emotional comfort to those who were raised with it or accept it. It may be a means of connection to a larger community which share beliefs and historical similarites. And people DO make donations to communities of their choice.
Just don’t call it science because it isn’t.

Altho’ I’ve looked over the 8 circuits before, I subscribe to an entirely different view which might even take drugs into account- it involves how deeply something is processed and the lower you go the less language is involved.

However, I have witnessed even the agnostic resort to quasi-religious language if enough nirvanic substances/ etc were involved.

BTW I meant to ask you, @AdamG, how many people ask for their money back after the chemotherapy they received, shown in laboratory studies to shrink tumors by X per cent and give, say, a median survival of 4 extra months, turns out not to work on them? And if not, why not?

I’m not Adam, but here’s my answer. Generally, no, they don’t get their money back, and here’s why: they were told ahead of time that there was a chance it wouldn’t work and told of all the risks. They made the decision to pursue it. If your mechanic doesn’t know what’s wrong with your car, but suggests he can try replacing a part and see if that does it, and it fails, do you ask for your money back? Well, maybe you do, but odds are the mechanic will not refund you. It’s the same principle; as long as they were upfront about what you were getting for the money, it was a fair transaction.

Regarding the unconscious….

I think we tend to put too much store by our consciousness, as it if it is some discrete entity. I don’t think it is, and I think the line between the conscious and unconscious mind is extremely fuzzy, if indeed there is a meaningful distinction at all. Certainly there are things going on in our brains that we are unaware of. Huge amounts of things. But these aren’t really below consciousness; we just aren’t paying attention to them, because we’d go mad if we tried and there’s not really any point. Things like vision. I’m a software engineer; if you look at the enormous effort that a computer has to put into synthetic vision, you’d have a staggering respect for the *magic* that the human brain pulls off so effortlessly. What you see is so much more than what your eyes detect. It’s heavily processed. Even if we set aside for a moment the amazing persistence of vision that smooths out our saccades and makes everything appear equally colorful and clear when in fact our visual field is very different depending on distance from the fovea, just think of this: you don’t see a photograph. You see *things*. You see faces, and expressions. You don’t usually have to think about identifying them; they are already identified. You even see faces where there aren’t faces, and can tease out many hidden patterns without even thinking about it. And then there’s writing. If you’re fully literate, you don’t sound out words. They just flow. And when you look at a letter, even a fake letter created for a sci-fi movie or something, you nearly always just know that it’s a letter. It’s not something else, it’s a letter. How do you know that? It is amazing the work the brain does.

This is all done without thinking about it — unconsciously. And that sort of thing is going on all the time with all of your senses, to levels that we haven’t even begun to plumb. Our bodies begin to react to threats and the presence of suitable mates before we consciously realize it. We’re also lagging significantly behind reality, but don’t realize that either because the brain adjusts the timeline without us being aware of it. We interpret speech effortlessly (most of the time, unless there is a problem with the ears or a neurological deficit — all of these things can be affected by neurological deficits). You don’t have to imagine something metaphysical to be amazed by it; it’s staggeringly powerful and beautiful.

Marg:

I would like to point out that between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC humanity seems to have made a jump in consciousness that gave us Homer, Socrates, Plato, the Old Testament, the Buddha, Confucianism etc.

You seem to be arguing that there was some advance in human consciousness. I disagree. It wasn’t an advance in consciousness — it was a crucial innovation: writing. This is the oldest period from which the thoughts of great men and women survive. Before that, there may well have been equal giants, but there was no way to preserve their genius. Pictograms only go so far. Writing of course also permits greater collaboration; the joining of minds. It wasn’t an expanded consciousness in this period, it was better exploitation of that consciousness.

I had the same thought, re: writing. For the first time, we were able to put our thoughts down in a permanent and easily interpreted form that could be passed down from generation to generation. As you say, there may well have been people equally as intelligent and insightful as those Marg listed, but they didn’t have any means by which to transfer their thought down through successive generations.

Where there are lapses in the occurrence of the “spark of genius”, it may simply be due to the fact that a written record was not left behind. For example, during the Dark Ages, very few people were literate, and what literature was produced was often very tightly controlled by the church. Many erudite documents were destroyed (e.g., the medical texts at Alexandria, among others). Oral tradition can overcome this to only a very small degree before it veers wildly off, rendering the original thought unknown (think the game “telephone”).

And then there are other the leaps of logic that the thinker either did not write down or whose writings just lingered in obscurity somewhere, lost to the sands of time. What we see are the things that got publicity, for lack of a better word.

To add to the writing, culture made a significant influence. A culture that embraces knowledge-seeking is more likely to find new knowledge than one that embraces rote-learning. If there was one thing that caused the scientific revolution, it was the realization that Aristotle wasn’t always right – and proving that he was sometimes wrong.

See my discussion of the ‘unconscious’ at 10:42 pm. If you look at the full moon when it’s near the horizon- vs when it’s at the zenith- it appears to be much larger, although the visual angles taken up by its images on the retina are exactly the same- because other information is taken into account to calculate perceived distance ( same angle + cues for more distance = ‘larger’/ filled space looks to be more than empty). Perceptual illusions illustrate a conflict ( or sorts) between vision and knowledge.

@ Todd W.:

Some cross-cultural studies suggest that literacy changes how people interact with the world. Some might even say that we learn to ‘see’ it differently- i.e. look for different things, divide it up into parts differently.

@ W. Kevin:

Agreed. Yet some would have us go back to the naivete resplendent prior to the Enlightenment. Go figure.

@Calli
Wasn’t the development of writing a crucial leap in human consciousness? Esp. since seemed to occur across a broad spectrum of societies within a relatively limited period of time.

I thoroughly enjoyed your description of the workings of the brain.

@Narad
Thank you for the Eight Circuits of Consciousness. Why is there no room here for the energy healing model, particularly in the 5th and the 8th? I also found Leary’s proposition that the higher four circuits exist for future use by humans interesting.

Why is there no room here for the energy healing model, particularly in the 5th and the 8th? I also found L

You appear to have utterly failed to grasp the meaning of “bad Fazzm.” And that you don’t know what ‘energy’ means. And that the cosmic spook show churning around in your head is in fact just in your head. You wish to pretend that this séancey hokum is not just on par with fantastically detailed knowledge of the physical world, but somehow even better, because, darnit, there’s just not enough straight magic to be had in that dry field, and all you can understand is magic, and so “understanding” magic is special, and so you’re not an ignoramus. You’re wrong.

I also found Leary’s proposition that the higher four circuits exist for future use by humans interesting.

That’s the teleological difficulty I mentioned. Humans are born with higher brain circuits that are designed to be turned on by zero gravity? Designed by whom? The human brain is an astonishing thing but I think many of its most amazing abilities are spandrels.

The “Eight Circuits” are pretty much part and parcel of Leary’s prediction of wondrous happenings associated with the coming of comet Kohoutek, which he renamed “comet Starseed,” which name he presumably ripped off from Larry Niven and which was a dud in its appearance. Everything Leary was cheap and derivative after ~1960.

What arrogance to assume that our fantastically detailed understanding of the physical world is complete.

You aren’t saying anything about the physical world. It is merely an imitative prop in a supernatural drama that you invoke in order to sell the sorry exercise to people who might notice that “I summon ghosts” is problematic, but not “I beam healing energy, and there are these ‘geomagnetic probes.'”

But Marg, I believe that what *you’re* talking about has very little to do with the physical world but can more kindly be described as encompassing spiritual, ultramundane and mystical phenomena.
And who in the world around here believes that he or she has all of the answers about how the physical world operates although MOST of us would probably agree that, as a start, what most refer to as psychological, mental, intellectual, social or even spiritual and mystical emanates/ emerges from a very physical place that proceeds itself from basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Bye bye.

@Narad @DW
What I am trying to say is that the phenomenon I call “energy healing” (which may or may not turn out to have anything with energy) might be a part of the physical world that we do not yet know about/understand and that you are only attributing it to the magical because of our current state of ignorance about it. Five hundred years ago all the science we now take for granted would have been attributed to the fantastic and the magical.

@Narad
To what purpose did you bring up the Eight Circuits of Consciousness? And just out of curiosity, what is the scientific take on Kundalini?

Just when I thought I was out…
Seriously, I attribute nothing to magic but *people* may attribute things that they don’t understand or things that don’t exist to magic or soul or deity. When I say the issue is ‘spiritual or mystical” I believe that those concerns will eventually resolve down to the psychological. For example, art and literature are products of human beings who are animals who create abstract and fanciful innovations. Technology is also a unique product of human ‘spirit’- in other words, I don’t see much beyond this life but it can be incredibly rich and un-concerned with physicality. Or not.

I think I should leave the kundalini to someone else. I should probably order a drink.

What I am trying to say is that the phenomenon I call “energy healing” (which may or may not turn out to have anything with energy) might be a part of the physical world that we do not yet know about/understand and that you are only attributing it to the magical because of our current state of ignorance about it.

Do you know what “begging the question” actually means, Marg? Moreover, here you try to insinuate yourself into that which you desperately wish to appropriate with what “we” don’t know, although you plainly don’t know a goddamned thing about the physical world aside from the sort of thing that prevents you from getting run over when crossing the street. There is no “we,” Marg. It is a useful construction in certain situtations, particularly among peers, but you’re not a peer in this endeavor. What is going on is that you want what someone else has and thus declare it to be community propery of some sort held by The Cosmic Mind, to which all have access if only they can tune to the Right Frequencies, and so you can just toss around terms willy-nilly and expect to be taken seriously. All you are actually doing is engaging in marketing.

Five hundred years ago all the science we now take for granted would have been attributed to the fantastic and the magical.

You have already played this card. You didn’t live 500 years ago, and as such, it’s just more self-serving fantasy, to put it mildly.

To what purpose did you bring up the Eight Circuits of Consciousness?

To see whether you had the slightest inclination to draw any sort of distinctions between different varieties of downright crap. Mission accomplished.

And just out of curiosity, what is the scientific take on Kundalini?

I think you can get a good view of it single-handed with a mirror, so perhaps you should check with it on what it has to say first.

No, it doesn’t. It is standard-issue occultist blab and common as dirt. If somebody got Central Casting on the blower, the actress delivered would be wearing a diaphanous gown and while twirling and ululating. Maybe some finger cymbals.

Marg’s comments put me in mind of a case study I was reading this morning in employment law, wherein a woman sued for wrongful termination. Her dismissal was for repeatedly violating company policies on absenteeism, and her defense was that she used magic to make sure she got her work done.

(She fell into not one but two protected categories which I assume is how she convinced a lawyer to take her case).

I will at this point recommend the bound photo collection Aquarian Odyssey for flavor value should anyone run across it in a second-hand shop, even though the gossip I’ve heard about Snyder is anything but flattering.

Wasn’t the development of writing a crucial leap in human consciousness? Esp. since seemed to occur across a broad spectrum of societies within a relatively limited period of time.

I’m arguing more that it was a crucial leap in technology, not consciousness. It did not occur at the same time worldwide, incidentally (not that we can know all the times that writing was developed; there are definitely dead scripts out there, and almost certainly many that have been completely lost to human knowledge). Writing arose in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC (cunieform, in Sumer) and by then was also in use in Egypt (hieroglyphics), and sparked the development of many other systems of writing across the Old World — our alphabet is descended from this. By 1200 BC, a very different system of writing was developed in China, although archeologists like to argue about whether it was a novel invention or whether the concept of language was adopted through exposure to the writing systems of the Mideast; I’m inclined to the notion that it was independent, as it takes a very different strategy to representing language. Around 600 BC, a completely independent invention of writing appears to have occurred in Mesoamerica. The Rapanui of Easter Island independently invented writing (totally from scratch, apparently) no earlier than the 13th century (a truly unique script called Rongorongo which no one alive can read), perhaps the most recent invention of writing (and not just invention of a script), although there is some debate whether the script actually predated European contact (which surely would have demonstrated at least the concept of writing).

The societies who did develop writing in close proximity in time (Egypt, Sumer) were also in close geographic proximity, so I wouldn’t read too much into that. They traded openly with one another; whichever came up with the idea first, the other would have quickly realized the value and devised their own script.

They traded openly with one another; whichever came up with the idea first, the other would have quickly realized the value and devised their own script.

I imagine the Pharaoh of the day, hearing from his advisors of this “script” technology the Sumerians were using to record who had paid taxes and to write one another letters, calling together the greatest minds of the Upper and Lower kingdoms and telling them “We must close the Missive Gap!”

It is pretty obvious that Egyptian hieroglyphics were designed by a committee.

What I am talking about does have to do with the physical world. You just haven’t seen/experienced it yet. I have. Insulting me doesn’t make it go away.

For thousands of years people “saw” the sun going around the Earth. They “experienced” that. They might well argue that what they had seen with their own eyes surely outweighed any wisenheimer who claimed it was the Earth going around the sun instead. Except as we know, those wisenheimers were the ones who were correct, not the ones who said “You just haven’t seen/experienced it yet. I have.”

Even if every person’s senses and memories were perfect (they aren’t) and never perceived what they expected to see rather than what was really happening (which they do all the time) it still wouldn’t mean that that person was automatically the expert on why it happened. And that is what you are claiming here, that having personally seen/experienced “energy healing” means you couldn’t possibly be wrong about it being energy healing.

Furthermore, you are claiming that the same experience makes you similarly infallible on things you didn’t see/experience (Bengston and his quantum-entangled mice) or things that you couldn’t have seen/experienced (a “healer” exerting a healing intent and a patient 2000 miles away being affected by it.)

Five hundred years ago all the science we now take for granted would have been attributed to the fantastic and the magical.

And how did what we previously attributed to magic become understood scientifically? By collecting observations, proposing hypotheses which explain those observations, designing and carrying out esperiments to corroborate or falsify those hypotheses, and gradually accumulating enough evidence to derive comprehensive, predictive and falsifiable theoretical models.

In fact, this is what Bengston initially tried to do with his mouse experiments–he beleived energy healing might be an effective therapy, he proposed a hypothesis , he tested that hypotheses (“If energy healing is real, if I take two groups of mice, give both cancer, treat one group with healing energy and leave the second group untreated, the treated group should survive longer/in greater numbers than the untreated group”), he got his results (“Mice in both groups surivived with equal frequencey for equivalent lengths of time”), and he reached the obvious conclusion (“I have failed to demonstrate that healing energy is any more effective at treating cancer than no treatment whatsoever”)

No, wait…somehow he didn’t reach the obvious conclusion. Instead, he asserted without evidence that trating one group of mice with healing energy somehow someway cured both groups of mice–even those which didn;t receive any. And that’s why his experimetns are a total fail if yone’s seriously interested in having healing energy move from the realm of magic into the realm of science. You cannot ignore results you’d rather not have generated. You can’t at the conclusion of experiment which failed to corroborate your initial hypothesis declare a completely new outcome to argue that it instead did (“Umm, I ACTUALLY predicted BOTH groups of mice would have identical outcomes…yeah, that’s the ticket!”).

In science you go where the evidence leads you, whether it’s where you wanted to end up or not.

I think that Marg mixes up the “evolution of consciousness” ( whatever THAT is) with cultural transformations that affect how people think and live:

a long time ago ( the Victorian era) those who visited less industrially developed cultures assumed that the *people* were less advanced than they themselves. They were really looking at culture: there was less literacy which made the outsiders assume that higher mental processes were not going on; later research ( compiled byCole and Scribner, others) have shown that less inductrialised societies DO use abstraction but you have to look for it! If you give them standard ‘western’ tests- they don’t fare very well ( Why should they?) BUT if you look at how they live, you’ll find complex business arrangements and trade, systems of social/ familial heirarches and even ways of speaking by allusion- so you can discuss your opponents in their presence ( guarded speech). All higher mental processes- what we might call ‘executive functioning’ and formal operations.

We might say that literacy and symbol manipulation make use of formal operational thought ( including the roots of scientific analysis) more LIKELY. Within ‘modern’ societies there is a vast range of levels of functioning which is most likely dependent upon social class. Something which education can address, not *consciousness*.

New Agey folks have co-opted that word so entirely that I am loathe to use it myself.

I have been reading Nassim Taleb’s ‘Fooled By Randomness’ and this passage, at the very beginning of the Preface, reminded me of this discussion:

This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense mathematical trader (self-styled “practitioner of uncertainty”) who spent his life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with uncertainty and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings som